• M J Bernardes and R Nunes.
• Serviço de Bioética e Ética Médica, Faculdade de Medicina, Universidade do Porto, Porto, Portugal. mjflbernardes@gmail.com
• Rev Port Pneumol. 2012 Nov 1;18(6):289-93.

IntroductionReporting of ethical committee (EC) approval and patient consent in publications involving human subjects may be lower than recommended. In this paper this ethical issue was analysed in the Portuguese Journal of Pulmonology and in the other two Portuguese medical journals with impact factor indexed in the ISI Web of Knowledge.MethodsReporting of EC approval and patient consent was searched in all publications involving human subjects published in the Acta Médica Portuguesa, Acta Reumatológica Portuguesa and Portuguese Journal of Pulmonology, from the 1(st) July 2010 until the 30(th) June 2011. The search also looked for the involvement of vulnerable and potentially identifiable subjects.ResultsMost of the analysed publications, which included a considerable proportion of vulnerable (23%) and of potentially identifiable case reports (14%), were case reports (49%). Overall EC approval ranged from 0% to 28%, in case reports and prospective studies, respectively, whereas overall patient consent ranged from 0% to 26%. There were not statistically significant differences in results among the selected journals.ConclusionsReporting of EC approval and patient consent in the three leading Portuguese medical journals has been lower than in their leading world counterparts. This should be taken into account and further audited in future, not only for the protection of the research subjects but also to maintain public trust in the process.Copyright © 2012 Sociedade Portuguesa de Pneumologia. Published by Elsevier España. All rights reserved.

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