• Kaele M Leonard, Timothy A Khalil, Jacob Welch, Greta Dahlberg, Ankush Ratwani, Jennifer D Duke, Rafael Paez, Elisa J Gordon, Samira Shojaee, Robert J Lentz, and Fabien Maldonado.
• Division of Allergy, Pulmonary, and Critical Care Medicine, Department of Medicine, Vanderbilt University Medical Center; Vanderbilt Interventional Pulmonology Research; Vanderbilt Multidisciplinary Assessment and Stratification of Lung Cancer with Biomarkers Laboratory.
• Chest. 2024 Oct 17.

BackgroundRobotic assisted bronchoscopy has been enthusiastically adopted in the U.S. and transformed the management of patients with indeterminate pulmonary nodules. Unprecedented industry investments in research, development, and marketing have profoundly affected the bronchoscopy landscape, leading to concerns that conflicts of interest could influence the validity of bronchoscopy studies. Disclosures of conflicts of interest in research are predicated on open and transparent self-reporting.Research QuestionAre self-reported relevant conflicts of interest in articles pertaining to robotic assisted bronchoscopy accurate when compared to publicly available payments on the Centers of Medicare & Medicaid Services' Open Payments Database?Study Design And MethodsAll articles pertaining to robotic assisted bronchoscopy indexed on PubMed between 2016 and 2022 were screened for relevance. Articles appearing in the five journals with the most relevant publications were selected. General, research, and associated research payments reported in the Open Payments Database were recorded for each US physician-author with available data. "Relevant payments" refer to transactions made to authors by bronchoscopy-related companies. Documentation of all payments involving these companies during the three years prior to an article's submission date was obtained. These payments were compared to the self-reported conflicts of interest for each author, per article, and the number and value of payments were categorized and totaled.ResultsTwenty-seven articles were included, accounting for 75 U.S. physicians with data reported in the Open Payments Database. Of the $17 million in relevant payments reported, $9.9 million were not disclosed (57%). Sixty-eight of 75 (91%) of authors had incomplete physician disclosures. Excluding food and beverage payments, sixty authors had incomplete disclosures (80%).InterpretationRelevant conflicts of interest appear to be inconsistently disclosed in publications on robotic assisted bronchoscopy, suggesting self-reporting may be an insufficient strategy. A centralized disclosure process that is automated or easier to use should be considered.Copyright © 2024. Published by Elsevier Inc.

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