Across five prominent radiology journals, authors failed to disclose nearly $186.6 million in payments from the industry, according to new research published Saturday.
Relationships between rads and other monied interests are common, with 70% of members of the specialty receiving at least one such payment. Working with vendors can have a positive impact on patient care, but it also can expose radiologists to potential bias, experts detailed in the Journal of the American College of Radiology [1].
To better understand this issue, Yale’s Dr. Dheeman Futela and colleagues analyzed three years’ worth of disclosures to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services’ Open Payments Database. They unearthed some eye-opening findings: Only 4.4% of U.S. journal study authors disclosed all financial ties to the industry, and nearly 81% failed to report any financial relationship.
“This study highlights the prevalence of industry payments to U.S. authors of prominent radiology journals and the high rates of nondisclosures,” Futela, a research affiliate at the Yale University School of Medicine, and colleagues wrote March 23. “The act of financial disclosure by itself may not completely mitigate the risk of bias, but with this data being publicly available, greater awareness and transparency would increase the trustworthiness of research/publications.”
The analysis centered around articles published in 2021 across JACR, Radiology, the American Journal of Roentgenology, the Journal of Vascular and Interventional Radiology, and the American Journal of Neuroradiology. Futela and co-authors examined all financial disclosures for these articles, and then for each author extracted Open Payments disclosures spanning three years prior to publication.
This produced a total of 643 articles, 4,076 authorships and 3,406 unique authors. Of those, 1,032 unique authors received industry payments in the past three years, at a median amount of $6,650 (and interquartile range of $355 to $87,725. Only 61 authors (or 4.4%) disclosed all industry relationships, 205 (14.8%) disclosed some of them, and 1,122 (80.8%) failed to report any industry ties. Undisclosed payments totaled $186,578,350 and represented about 67.2% of all payments, the authors noted.
RSNA’s Radiology had the highest proportion of authorships who disclosed at least some of their industry ties (32.3%). The Journal of Vascular and Interventional Radiology came in second (18.2%), followed by the American Journal of Neuroradiology (17.3%), JACR (13.1%), and the American Journal of Roentgenology (10.3%). “Research” accounted for the largest portion of the total pot at nearly $206 million paid to 544 authorships. The highest number of payments was in the “general” category, totaling $65 million to 1,321 authorships. Another nearly $6.9 million (to 16 authorships) made up the “ownership” category, the authors reported.
Industry partners making the largest payments to U.S. authors across the five journals included Pfizer ($42 million), GE HealthCare ($18 million), Merck Sharp & Dohme Corp. ($15 million), AbbVie ($13 million), Siemens Medical Solutions ($12 million), and AstraZeneca Pharmaceuticals ($11 million).
Futela and colleagues speculated that “lack of awareness” among the field could be one reason for absent transparency. Also, most journals require the disclosure of “relevant” conflicts of interest, and some authors may not believe that previous industry payments did not impact their research.
“Failure to disclose financial relationships could be considered a departure from accepted practice to minimize bias,” the authors charged. “Perception of bias undermines public trust in biomedical research and peer review process. Increased awareness in the academic community, and potentially severe repercussions for knowingly or recklessly ignoring professional standards, may lead to higher level of compliance.”
Read much more, including potential study limitations, at the link below.
Marty Stempniak has covered healthcare since 2012, with his byline appearing in the American Hospital Association's member magazine, Modern Healthcare and McKnight's. Prior to that, he wrote about village government and local business for his hometown newspaper in Oak Park, Illinois. He won a Peter Lisagor and Gold EXCEL awards in 2017 for his coverage of the opioid epidemic.