Abstract 17237: Trends in Sex and Regional Disparities Among Authorships in American Heart Association Scientific Sessions (2019-2023): A Bibliometric Analysis

Abstract

Background: Women continue to be underrepresented in clinical medicine, including cardiology, despite improvements in participation. We aim to examine gender and regional disparities in authorship of abstracts published in AHA scientific sessions. Method: AHA journal was screened for abstracts with keywords: "Meta-analysis", "Systematic Review" or "Pooled analysis from 2019-2023. 499 out of 567 studies were included from circulation journal of AHA, and data on gender of first and corresponding (last) author was extracted with a validated smartdata application from 7.5 billion people's names (namsor.app). Abstract category and regions of affiliation data were extracted. Chi-square was used to describe trends. Results: Of 499 abstracts (2019:21.4%, 2020:23.2%, 2021:20.2%, 2022:31.9%, 2023:3.2%) females as first author were 24% and as last author was 18.8%. Categories of abstracts were general cardiology (GC)(32.7%), interventional cardiology (IC)(24.8%), electrophysiology (EP)(12.4%), and cardio-oncology (CO)(2.6%). North America (NA) had the highest number of abstracts (67.5%). Meta-analyses were higher than systematic reviews (88.6% vs. 10.6%), pooled analyses were higher than comparison plots (51.1% vs 41.3%, p =0.001). Male corresponding and first author (62.2%) were higher than inter-sex corresponding and first authors. Yet, corresponding male authors with female first was higher than female corresponding with male first (16.4% vs 11.5%) and corresponding female authors with female first was lower than male first (11.5% vs. 9.9%, p=0.015). Disparity is noted in abstract categories across regions. IC was more in Asia (23.5% vs. 21.6) compared to GC, while GC was more common in Europe (48.5% vs. 24.2%) and NA (32.7% vs 23.2%). Conclusion: Gender disparity was noted across abstract categories and regions. Women need to be represented more in clinical and academic research. Further studies are needed to identify barriers to equal representation.