Adherence rates of person-centered language in amputation research: A cross-sectional analysis

Background: Person-centered language (PCL) is the recommended method of addressing patients by the American Medical Association Manual of Style in medical research, thus requiring published manuscripts to be free of non-PCL. Although individuals, communities, and organizations have the autonomy to use non-PCL, it is imperative for medical researchers to use PCL in an effort to reduce the transfer of stigmatization into clinical practice. Objective: To determine current adherence to PCL related to individuals with limb or digit amputations in scientific journals. Methods: A cross-sectional analysis was performed by systematically searching PubMed from May 1, 2018 to April 30, 2020 for publications focused on amputations. Journals with less than 20 articles were excluded, and remaining publications were randomized, with the first 500 articles selected. Articles were screened for inclusion criteria, and data were extracted in masked, duplicate fashion, for predetermined non-PCL terms. A chi-squared test and logistic regression were used to quantify PCL adherence study characteristics. Results: Of 500 articles, 81 were excluded, and 419 articles from 13 journals were examinedd64.6% containing non-PCL. The most common non-PCL terms used were amputee in 148 articles and limb loss in 138 articles. PCL was significantly associated with article type, research funding, and journal requirements for PCL. Conclusions: Results indicate that one-third of research articles were PCL-adherent, which we speculate may contribute to the stigma that individuals with amputations experience. Our findings suggest that PCL adherence is higher among surgery research and lower among engineering and prosthetic research. (c) 2021 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Automated summary

The study found that approximately one-third of scientific journal articles used person-centered language when referring to individuals with limb or digit amputations, while a significant proportion still used non-person-centered language terms, which may exacerbate the stigma experienced by individuals with amputations.