Future Publication Rates of Abstracts Presented at American Society for Surgery of the Hand Annual Conferences From 2017-2020

Abstract

Purpose Annual meetings held by the American Society for Surgery of the Hand (ASSH) highlight a variety of pre-publication research on the hand and upper extremity. We sought to evaluate publication trends and factors associated with the publication of abstracts presented at recent ASSH annual conferences. Methods There were 2,373 abstracts presented at ASSH annual conferences from 2017-2020. These abstracts were identified from program information on the ASSH website. PubMed and Google Scholar were queried to identify publication of these abstracts using abstract title and each author listed. For published manuscripts, the journal, impact factor (IF), level of evidence (LOE), and time to publication were recorded. Results The overall publication rate was 43.9%. Podium abstracts had a higher publication rate (55.0% +/- 14.9%) than poster abstracts (41.0% +/- 8.5%) (p<0.0001). The time to publication from presentation was 12.1 +/- 6.1 months. Published abstracts had a stronger LOE (3.5 +/- 0.9) than non-published abstracts (3.6 +/- 0.8) (p=0.03). The journal IF for published abstracts was 2.4 +/- 1.3. Podium abstracts had a higher average impact factor (2.6 +/- 1.5) than poster abstracts (2.4 +/- 1.3) (p=0.01). Journal of Hand Surgery (JHS) (34.4%; IF: 2.3) was the most common journal of published manuscripts. There were no differences in LOE or IF for Resident and Fellows (R&F) abstracts compared to General Submission abstracts. Conclusions Publication rates of abstracts presented at ASSH annual conferences from 2017-2020 are similar to previously reported literature. Podium abstracts continue to have a higher publication rate than poster abstracts. There was no difference in publication rate between R&F abstracts and General Submission abstracts.