Ziai K, et al. - The association between the physicians receiving the top compensation from surgical and/or medical device manufacturers and their academic affiliation, expertise, and disclosure of conflicts of interest was investigated. A bibliometric analysis of the 100 physicians receiving the highest compensation from 10 large surgical and medical device manufacturers was performed. Only 84 of 225 of the relevant 2016 publications (37.3%) displayed conflicts of interest. Among the physicians receiving the highest industry payments, a high level of inconsistency was identified between self-declared conflict of interest (COI) and the Open Payments Database (OPD). Hence a policy of full disclosure for all publications was proposed, regardless of relevance. No statistically significant association between academic rank or productivity and industrial payments was evident.

Methods

• A population-based bibliometric analysis identifying 10 surgical and medical device manufacturing companies and the 10 physicians receiving the highest compensation from each company using the 2015 Open Payments Database (OPD) general payments data was undertaken.
• Record was maintained of the total amount of general payments, number of payments, institution type, and academic rank for each of the 100 physicians.
• Exclusion of royalty or license payments was done.
• From January 1 through December 31, 2016, a search of PubMed was performed to identify articles published by each physician, and their associated COI declaration.
• Scopus was utilized to identify bibliometric data reported as the h index (number of papers by a researcher with at least h citations each).
• Discrepancy between self-declared COI and industry payments was determined as the main outcome measure.

Results

• A total of $12,446,969 was estimated to be paid to 100 physicians included in the sample population (88% men); the median payment was $95,993.
• In this study, 50 physicians (50.0%) were faculty at academic institutions.
• For the authors, the mean (SD) h index was 18 (18; range, 0-75).
• In 2016, these physicians published 412 articles, with a mean (SD) of 4 (6) publications (range, 0-25) and median of 1 (36 physicians had no publications).
• Of these articles, 225 (54.6%) were identified as meaningful to the general payments received by the authors.
• Potential COI was declared only in 84 of the 225 relevant publications (37.3%).