ESTRO 2025 - Abstract Book

S2300

Interdisciplinary – Health economics & health services research

ESTRO 2025

This study used a fixed cohort method to establish if there was a link between the positivity or statistical significance of results and their subsequent publication. The methodology was based on previously published studies 2,3

Material/Methods: 200 abstracts were chosen at random from the abstract book of a large international Radiation Therapy conference. Two separate timepoints were investigated (2016 and 2019). From each abstract the following were determined: positive or negative aspect of the conclusion (determined by two independent assessors) and p-value (or absence of p-value). This provided a fixed cohort of positive and negative abstracts to follow up. Online databases were then searched for publications relating to each of the abstracts to determine their publication status (published or not). A cutoff of 5 years after the publication of the abstracts was used for comparability. This method was chosen to provide a pool of negative abstracts that can be difficult to find with other methods. Fisher’s Exact Test was run on the datasets to determine if there was a relationship between each variable and publication status. Results: The presence of p values ≤ 0.05 had a positive relationship with publication status in the 2018 data (p=0.0004); however there was no similar relationship found in the 2016 data (p=0.2037). No relationship was found between positive findings and publication status for either time points (p>0.05). Conclusion: Publication bias based on how positive or negative the results are, does not appear to be a problem in the data analysed. This can reasonably be extrapolated to Radiation therapy publications in general. P-value publication bias was found in one of the time points indicating that this bias is present to some degree in publications. Further investigation is needed to determine the extent of the issue and if there is a time trend present. References: 1 Devito N. J. & Goldacre, B. 2019. Catalogue of bias: publication bias. BMJ Evidence-Based Medicine, 24 , 53-54 2 Harris IA, Mourad M, Kadir A, Solomon MJ, Young JM. Publication bias in abstracts presented to the annual meeting of the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons. J Orthop Surg (Hong Kong). 2007 Apr;15(1):62-6. doi: 10.1177/230949900701500114. PMID: 17429120. 3 Schulte TL, Huck K, Osada N, Trost M, Lange T, Schmidt C, Gosheger G, Bullmann V. Publication rate of abstracts presented at the Annual Congress of the Spine Society of Europe (years 2000-2003). Eur Spine J. 2012 Oct;21(10):2105-12. doi: 10.1007/s00586-012-2211-5. Epub 2012 Mar 8. PMID: 22398641; PMCID: PMC3463689. Poster Discussion Enhancing radiotherapy outcomes through value-based health care: a structured methodology for continuous quality improvement Paul Cremers 1 , Iverna Nijsten 1 , Pascale Simons 1 , Evert van Limbergen 1 , Malou Kuppen 1 , Maria Jacobs 1,2 , Ingrid Kremer 1 1 Department of Radiation Oncology, Maastro, Maastricht, Netherlands. 2 Tilburg School of Economics and Management, Tilburg University, Tilburg, Netherlands Purpose/Objective: Our radiotherapy institute embraces the strategic implementation of Value-Based Health Care (VBHC) 1 to navigate the dynamic field of radiotherapy characterized by rapidly evolving innovations. The institute focuses on continuously providing excellent care to optimize patient value, defined as patient-relevant outcomes first and cost Keywords: Publication Bias 2441