Magill Department of Anaesthesia, Chelsea and Westminster Hospital, London, UK.
Imperial College London, UK.
Anaesthesia. 2018 Dec;73(12):1531-1534. doi: 10.1111/anae.14450.
We examined the prevalence of novel acronyms in the titles of anaesthetic and related studies and the response of anaesthetists to them. We separately analysed trainee-led research projects in the UK supported by the Research and Audit Federation of Trainees (RAFT), and a 10-year cohort of papers identified using the PubMed literature search tool. We also conducted a survey of 20 anaesthetists within our institution regarding the utility and impact of titles containing acronyms, and their recall of the associated topics. Finally, we developed a scoring system for acronym accuracy and complexity, the ORigin of AcroNym letterinG Used Term AppropriateNess (ORANGUTAN) score, and measured the progression of acronym usage over the 10-year period studied. Our results show that while acronyms themselves are sometimes considered memorable, they do not aid recall of topics and are, in general, not considered helpful. There has been an increase in the prevalence of acronymic titles over 10 years, and in the complexity of acronyms used, suggesting that there is currently a selective pressure favouring the use of acronyms even if they are of limited benefit.
我们考察了麻醉学及相关研究标题中新颖缩写的流行程度，以及麻醉师对这些缩写的反应。我们分别分析了英国研究和审计学员联合会（RAFT）支持的学员主导的研究项目，以及使用 PubMed 文献搜索工具确定的 10 年队列论文。我们还对我们机构内的 20 名麻醉师进行了一项调查，了解含有缩写的标题的实用性和影响，以及他们对相关主题的记忆。最后，我们开发了一个缩写准确性和复杂性的评分系统，即缩写词首字母使用的恰当性评分（ORANGUTAN），并衡量了在研究的 10 年期间缩写使用的进展。我们的研究结果表明，虽然缩写本身有时被认为是令人难忘的，但它们无助于回忆主题，通常也不被认为是有帮助的。在 10 年的时间里，缩写标题的流行程度有所增加，缩写的复杂性也有所增加，这表明目前存在一种选择性压力，有利于使用缩写，即使它们的益处有限。
