weaknesses in the reporting of cross-sectional studies in accordance with the strobe report (the case of congenital anomaly among infants in iran): a review article

Background: the inadequate reporting of cross-sectional studies, as in the case of the prevalence of congeni-tal anomaly, could cause challenges in the synthesis of new evidence and make possible mistakes in the crea-tion of public policies. this study was conducted to critically appraise the quality of the articles involving con-genital anomaly prevalence in iranian infants with the strobe recommendations. methods: we performed a thorough literature search using the words congenital anomaly birth defect and iran in medline/pubmed, scopus, sid, elmnet, magiran, irandoc, iranmedex, and google scholar until aug 2017. in this critical appraisal we focused on cross-sectional studies that reported the prevalence of congeni-tal anomaly in iranian infants. data were analyzed using the strobe score per item and recommendation. results: the results of 17 selected articles on congenital anomaly prevalence showed that the overall accord-ance of the cross-sectional study reports with strobe recommendations was about 63%. all articles met the recommendations associated with the report of the study’s rationale, objectives, setting, key results and provi-sion of summary measures. methods and results were the weakest part of the articles, in which recommenda-tions associated with the participant flowchart and missing data analysis were not reported. the recommenda-tions with the lowest scores were those related to the sensitivity analysis (6%, n=1/17), bias (6%, n=1/17), and funding (41%, n=7/17). conclusion: cross-sectional studies about the prevalence of congenital anomaly in iranian infants have an insufficient reporting on the methods and results parts. we recognized a clear need to increase the quality of such studies.