Conflicts of Interest in Plastic Surgery Journals

BACKGROUND: Conflicts of interest pose a risk to the integrity of clinical research. As part of the Sunshine Act, the Open Payments Program was established to provide transparency in financial relationships between commercial entities and physicians. Previous research indicates disparities between industry payments self-reported by plastic surgeon authors and those disclosed by commercial entities. This study sought to revisit the accuracy of conflict-of-interest disclosures, comparing current trends with previously published data, and introduce a novel automated search tool designed to facilitate future reviews of self-disclosures. METHODS: Articles from the Aesthetic Surgery Journal and Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery published between 2017 and 2022 were reviewed. Self-reported disclosures for plastic surgeon authors were aggregated and compared against the Open Payments database using Python. RESULTS: A total of 8040 articles were reviewed. After filtering and applying inclusion criteria, 961 unique authors and 4226 authorships were identified. A total of 5802 discrepancies were found, with 78.6% of eligible authors having at least 1 discrepancy. Four percent of the included publications were estimated to contain undisclosed relationships that qualified as conflicts of interest. The median total payments for authors with discrepancies were greater than for authors without discrepancies ($9600 vs. $2500; P<0.001). A discrepancy in self-reporting was more likely to be identified among senior authors (P<0.001). CONCLUSIONS: Plastic surgeon authors continue to underreport their financial relationships. Automated screening may help identify disclosure discrepancies and support more complete author self-reporting.