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The Majority of Abstracts Presented at the American Association of Hand Surgery Annual Meetings Are Later Published
Benjamin Millar, BS
1; Tyson Stoker, MS
1; Lilah Fones, MD
2; Asif M Ilyas, MD, MBA
31Drexel University College of Medicine, Philadelphia, PA; 2Rothman Orthopaedic Institute at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital, Philadelphia, PA; 3Rothman Institute at Thomas Jefferson University, Philadelphia, PA
Introduction:
The American Association of Hand Surgery (AAHS) is a national organization devoted to the advancement of hand surgery. Its annual meeting comprises podium and poster presentations highlighting advancements in the field. To investigate the value added by presenting at the AAHS annual meeting toward presentation in a scientific journal, this study will report the publication rates of abstracts presented at the AAHS annual meetings from 2017-2020. The secondary goal is to identify traits shared by successfully published abstracts. It is hypothesized that AAHS meeting presentation aids publication, so the publication rate will be similar or higher than previous years and will positively correlate with strong level of evidence (LOE) or podium presentation.
Methods:
The AAHS website was queried for records on its annual meeting abstract presentations between 2017 and 2020. Each abstract's title, author list, topic, level of evidence (LOE), and presentation type (poster versus podium) were recorded. Both PubMed and Google Scholar were queried using abstract titles and keyword-author combinations. Successful publications' titles, author data, journal data, journal impact factor (IF), LOE, and number of citations were recorded. Comparative analysis was conducted employing student's t-tests and Pearson's chi-square tests.
Results:
A total of 1,268 abstracts were presented at the AAHS annual meetings from 2017 to 2020 and 786 (62.0%) were published at a minimum of 45 months after presentation. Specifically, 280 of the 413 podium presentations (67.8%) and 506 of the 855 poster presentations (59.2%) were later published. In addition to being published at a higher rate than posters (p=0.003), podium presentations had similar LOE (p=0.29), were published in journals with a similar IF (p=0.38), and gathered a similar amount of citations (p=0.20).
Conclusion:
A high proportion of abstracts presented at the AAHS annual meetings from 2017 to 2020 were published. Podium presentations demonstrated a higher publication rate compared to posters, but did not show significantly different LOE, journal IFs, or citation counts. These findings underscore the value of presenting at forums like the AAHS for disseminating high-quality research within the field of hand surgery.
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