Fate of presentations during German Anaesthesia Congresses

Background:To evaluate the publication rate of abstracts presented during t he German Anaesthesia Congress (DAK) in MEDLINE-listed journals in comparis on to the publication rate of abstracts presented during the meeting of the European Society of Anaesthesiologists (ESA). Methods: All abstracts of free papers (FP, orals) and posters of the 1994 D AK and the 1994 ESA meeting were included. Over a period of approximately 7 years (1993 to May 1999) the appearance of authors and abstracts topics in the literature were searched with the help of MEDLINE. Only original paper s were included in the analysis. Results: All 322 abstracts (268 FPs and 54 posters) of the DAK and all 244 abstracts (81 FP and 163 posters) of the ESA were analyzed. A total 122 of the DAK abstracts (37.9% of all abstracts) and 111 of the ESA abstracts (45 .5% of all abstracts) were published in MEDLINE-listed journals. Posters pr esented at the DAK were as published often (37%) as were oral presentations (38%). Of the 122 abstracts of the DAK that were published 71 (58.2%) were published in English (in 38 different journals) and 51 (41.8%) were publis hed in German (in 8 different journals), whereas 102 (92%) of the ESA abstr acts were published in english (in 42 different journals). Conclusion: The overall portion of abstracts of the DAK published in MEDLIN E indexed journals within 7 years was disappointing. The reasons for this m ay include deliberate avoidance of a publication (e.g. due to lack of inter est to publish, no time) or low quality of the abstract that hinders public ation in a MEDLINE indexed journal.