Publication rates of abstracts presented at the 1993 Annual Academy Meeting

What percent of abstracts presented at the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons annual meeting are submitted, survive peer review, and eventually are published? The answer to this fundamental question is important because many national meeting attendees use the unscrutinized information that is presented to alter their surgical practices, At the 1993 American Academy o f Orthopaedic Surgeons meeting, 573 abstracts were presented. After a 5-yea r period, 44% of abstracts presented were published as papers in a peer rev iewed journal. The results suggest that for various reasons, the majority o f presented material at the Academy meeting has not been authenticated scie ntifically to be as accurate as papers that survive the rigors of peer revi ew.