Discrepancies between author- and industry-reported disclosures of financial relationships at an annual gynecologic oncology research meeting.

Objective: Trillions of dollars pass to physicians from industry-related businesses annually, leading to many opportunities for financial conflicts of interest. The Open Payments Database (OPD) was created to ensure transparency. We describe the industry relationships as reported in the OPD for presenters at the 2019 Society of Gynecologic Oncology (SGO) Annual Meeting and evaluate concordance between author disclosures of their financial interests and information provided by the OPD.
Methods: This is an observational, cross-sectional study. Disclosure data were collected from authors with oral and featured abstract presentations in the 2019 SGO annual conference. These disclosures were compared to data available for each author in the 2018 OPD, which included the amount and nature of industry payments.
Results: We examined the disclosures of 301 authors who met inclusion criteria. Of 161 authors who had disclosure statements on their presentations,147 reported "no disclosures," and 14 disclosed industry relationships. The remaining 140 did not list any disclosure information. Sixty percent (184/301) of authors had industry relationships in the 2018 OPD, including 173 of 287 (60.3%) of authors who either reported no disclosures or did not have disclosure data available in their presentations. These transactions totaled over 43 million USD from 122 different companies, with most payments (46%) categorized as "Research or Associated Research." Accurate disclosure reporting was associated with receiving higher payments or research payments, and being a presenting author.
Conclusions: Most authors at the SGO annual conference did not correctly disclose their industry relationships when compared with their entries in the OPD.
Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest ELB reports grant payments from the National Institutes of Health (K12 HD050121-12), GOG Foundation and Eli Lilly, and has received a food and beverage payment from Intuitive. EJT served as a consultant for Auris Health, Inc. and has received miscellaneous food and beverage payments from Intuitive, Covidien, Ethicon, Davol, Merck, and AstraZeneca. These relationships do not present a conflict of interest with the current work. The remaining authors have nothing to disclose.
(Copyright © 2020. Published by Elsevier Inc.)