3.4 Comparisons between cancer COSs and OG COSs
A previous study conducted by Elizabeth G about the minimum standard assessments of cancer COSs showed that compliance rates for both four standards in scope domain were greater than 95%, which was consistent with OG COSs.19 The compliance rates for “Patients with the condition or their representatives” were both less than 35% in cancer COSs and OG COSs. Compared to OG COSs, the cancer COSs had the same low compliance rate for all five standards in consensus process standards ( <30%), but had lower compliance rates for “A scoring process was described a priori” (OR=0.37, 95% CI: 0.14 - 0.97, P=0.045) and “Criteria for including/dropping/adding outcomes were described a priori” (OR=0.15, 95% CI:0.03 - 1.09, P=0.63). Further, no significant difference was found in the compliance rates in other criteria between cancer COSs and OG COSs. (Table 7).
  1. Discussion
  2. Summary of characteristics of included COSs
We identified 44 OG COSs from 26 research topics, with pelvic organ prolapse, and maternity care being the most common. The first OG COSs was published in 2000, and the number has gradually increased over the years. Most OG COSs were published between 2017 2018. 91% of the published COSs were published by corresponding authors from the developed countries, and 86.4% of COSs were developed by more than three authors. Identification of an inclusive list of outcomes from the existing literature is critical to the development of a core outcome set.7 The main data sources include systematic reviews of published studies, reviews of published qualitative work, reviews of criteria in the national audit data set, and interviews with key stakeholders.16, 26 However, only three COSs interviewed key stakeholders to understand their views of important outcomes, and 16 % of COSs did not conduct systematic/literature review to identify existing knowledge about outcomes. Given that the comprehensiveness of the results of the systematic review is highly dependent on the results of the underlying data, there is a need for thorough verification of reported results. Unfortunately, only 34.1% of COSs searched more than three databases. Nevertheless, it should be noted that the systematic review of the results merely aggregates the opinions of previous researchers. Therefore, it is crucial to subsequently strike a consensus with the wider community of stakeholders on the outcomes to be included in a COS. In the present study, only twenty COSs (45.5%) conducted two or more rounds of Delphi survey, 40.9% of COSs used the consensus meeting method, and 36.4% of studies used both the systematic review and consensus methods.