Characteristics of studies published in areas of knowledge of internal medicine including quality, language and decade of publication

Abstract

Introduction: medical literature users have acces to many published studies with variable methodological quality for several reasons. A description of the characteristics of publications retrieved from cardiology, endocrinology, nephrology and pneumology, through PubMed, including quality characteristics by PubMed Clinical Queries filters, language and decade of publication was carried out.

Methodology: a descriptive study. Ten MeSH (Medical Subject Headings) Medline terms representative of cardiology, endocrinology, nephrology and pneumology were selected. PubMed searches were performed with and without quality filters of Clinical Queries in diagnosis and treatment, search by language and by decade of publication.

Results: 520 searches were conducted in PubMed. 498 952 publications were found in diagnosis and treatment; 16% are studies with quality features; 23% in cardiology, 13% pneumology, 13% endocrinology and 6.5% nephrology. 98% of studies are published in English, while only 2% is distributed proportionally in Spanish and French. In the decade of 2000 the number of studies with quality filters increased 2.4 times, compared with the 1990s.

Conclusions: there are a large number of studies published in Internal medicine; cardiology and endocrinology account for the majority; cardiology has the highest proportion of studies with quality features; pneumology, and endocrinology have a similar proportion. The majority of publications with quality filters are in English, compared with Spanish and French