Publication Rate of Abstracts Presented at the 2011-2019 Society for Education in Anesthesia Meetings

Introduction: The Society for Education in Anesthesia (SEA) promotes dissemination of discoveries and innovations. We investigated the rate of publication of SEA Spring Meeting abstracts, hypothesizing that Research abstracts were published more frequently than Innovative Curriculum abstracts. We also studied the time between abstract presentation and publication and tracked the journals in which they were published.

Methods: All abstracts presented at SEA spring meetings from 2011-2019 were included. We searched PubMed for published articles that were based on those SEA abstracts. We calculated the overall publication rate and the respective publication rates for Research and Innovative Curriculum abstracts. We calculated odds ratio (OR) and performed the Pearson χ² test to compare publication rates between Research abstracts and Innovative Curriculum abstracts. We calculated the mean number of years between meeting presentation and publication and tabulated the number of works published in each journal.

Results: A total of 351 abstracts (128 Research and 223 Curriculum) were presented at SEA spring meetings. The overall publication rate was 15% (52/351). Research abstracts were published more frequently than Curriculum abstracts: 24.2% (31/128) versus 9.4% (21/223); OR = 3.1 (95% confidence interval, 1.7-5.6); P = .0003. The mean time from presentation to publication was 1.7 ± 1.3 years. The works appeared in 20 different journals.

Conclusion: SEA Spring Meeting abstracts were published less frequently than abstracts from other medical professional society meetings (21%-72.3%). Although the lower publication rate of Innovative Curriculum abstracts unique to the SEA meeting largely explains this shortfall, a relatively low publication rate, even for the Research abstracts, signals opportunities for growth.