Publication rate of abstracts presented at the annual meeting of the American Urological Association.

OBJECTIVE

To determine the rate and time-course of peer-reviewed publication of abstracts presented at the annual meetings of the American Urological Association (AUA).

METHODS

All abstracts presented at the annual meetings of the AUA from 1998 to 2000 were searched in the PubMed database. To assess any significant predictors of ultimate peer-reviewed publication, abstract number, meeting year, presentation type (podium vs poster), type of research (basic vs clinical), date of publication and session name (i.e. prostate cancer: advanced) were entered into a database.

RESULTS

The overall rate of publication was 37.8%. Survival analysis indicated that most abstracts were published within 2 years of their respective meetings. Univariate and multivariate techniques showed that none of the tested covariates were significant predictors of publication.

CONCLUSIONS

Information presented at the AUA annual meetings should be carefully considered by physicians before implementation into their clinical practice. Researchers are encouraged to publish their data.