E1572. American College of Radiology Appropriateness Criteria®: A Bibliometric Analysis of Panel Members
Authors
Suryansh Bajaj;
University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences
Ajay Malhotra;
Yale New Haven Hospital
Tushar Garg;
Johns Hopkins School of Medicine
Mihir Khunte;
The Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University
Bhavya Pahwa;
University College of Medical Sciences
Xiao Wu;
University of California San Francisco
Dheeraj Gandhi;
University of Maryland Medical Center
Objective:
To assess the features of panel members involved in the writing of the American College of Radiology Appropriateness Criteria® (ACR-AC) and identify alignment with research output and topic-specific research publications.
Materials and Methods:
We conducted a cross-sectional analysis of all the ACR-AC published in 2021, which included a total of 18 new and 13 revised topics were added to the ACR-AC. We searched the PubMed database to record the total number of papers (P), the total number of ACRAC papers (C), the total number of first and non-first author papers relevant to the ACR-AC topic (R) for each listed author in the ACR-AC document. Keywords were systematically selected to search the previously published papers relevant to the ACR-AC topic by including the keywords from the ACR-AC document as well as from all the clinical variants described in the respective AC paper.
Results:
A total of 383 different panel members constituted 602 panel positions for creating 34 ACR-AC in 2021 with a median panel size of 17 members. 68 (17.5%) experts had been part of 10 previously published ACR-AC papers and 154 (40%) were members in 5 published ACR-AC papers. The median number of total publications for each author in the cohort was 45 (IQR: 24 - 97) and ACR-AC papers was 4 (IQR: 2 - 9). The median number of previously published papers relevant to the ACR-AC topic was 1 (IQR: 0 - 5). 44% of the panel members had no previously published paper relevant to the ACR-AC topic. The proportion of ACR-AC papers (C/P) was higher for authors with = 5 ACR-AC papers (0.21) than for authors with <5 ACR-AC papers (0.11, p < 0.0001), however, the proportion of relevant papers per topic (R/P) was higher for authors with <5 ACR-AC papers (0.10) than authors with = 5 ACR-AC papers (0.07), although it was not statistically significant (p = 0.08).
Conclusion:
ACR-AC are the most comprehensive national guidelines that aim to guide providers to use imaging modalities appropriately. The importance of ACR-AC in regulatory compliance and clinical decision-making cannot be understated given their national implementation under the medical appropriateness use criteria program. Our study reviewed the panel composition and provided baseline data that may be useful in building future panels of experts and improving transparency.
