The EFA Annual Meeting 2024 in Bratislava, Slovakia − and “Rise of the Machines”?

Forty-Eighth Annual Meeting, The Society of Thoracic Surgeons

If All the World’s a Stage, Then Where’s Our Microphone?

Publication rate of podium presentations from the orthopaedic research society annual meeting.

Forty-Second Annual Meeting, The Society of Thoracic Surgeons

Forty-First Annual Meeting, The Society of Thoracic Surgeons

In spite of efforts to improve gender diversity in orthopaedic surgery, women remain underrepresented, particularly with increasing academic rank. Opportunities to speak at society meetings are an important component of building a national reputation and achieving academic promotions. However, little is known about the gender diversity of orthopaedic society annual meeting speakers. Data on this topic are needed to determine whether these speaking roles are equitably distributed between men and women, which is fundamental to equalizing professional opportunity in academic orthopaedic surgery. QUESTION/PURPOSES: (1) Is the gender diversity of invited speakers at annual orthopaedic subspecialty society meetings proportional to society membership? (2) Are there differences in the proportion of women invited to speak in technical sessions (defined as sessions on surgical outcomes, surgical technique, nonsurgical musculoskeletal care, or basic science) versus nontechnical sessions (such as sessions on diversity, work-life balance, work environment, social media, education, or peer relationships)? (3) Does the presence of women on the society executive committee and annual meeting program committee correlate with the gender diversity of invited speakers? (4) Do societies with explicit diversity efforts (the presence of a committee, task force, award, or grant designed to promote diversity, or mention of diversity as part of the organization's mission statement) have greater gender diversity in their invited speakers? Seventeen national orthopaedic societies in the United States were included in this cross-sectional study of speakership in 2018. Each society provided the number of men and women members for their society in 2018. The genders of all invited speakers were tabulated using each society's 2018 annual meeting program. Speakers of all credentials and degrees were included. All manuscript/abstract presenters were excluded from all analyses because these sessions are selected by blinded scientific review. A Fisher's exact test was used to compare the proportion of women versus men in nontechnical speaking roles. The relationship between women in society leadership roles and women in all speaking roles was investigated using a linear regression analysis. A chi square test was used to compare the proportion of women in all speaking roles between societies with stated diversity efforts with societies without such initiatives. Overall, women society members were proportionately represented as annual meeting speakers, comprising 13% (4389 of 33,051) of all society members and 14% (535 of 3928) of all annual meeting speakers (% difference 0.6% [95% CI -0.8 to 1.5]; p = 0.60); however, representation of women speakers ranged from 0% to 33% across societies. Women were more likely than men to have nontechnical speaking roles, with 6% (32 of 535) of women's speaking roles being nontechnical, compared with 2% (51 of 3393) of men's speaking roles being nontechnical (OR 4.2 [95% CI 2.7 to 6.5]; p < 0.001). There was a positive correlation between the proportion of women in society leadership roles and the proportion of women in speaking roles (r = 0.73; p < 0.001). Societies with a stated diversity effort had more women as conference speakers; with 19% (375 of 1997) women speakers for societies with a diversity effort compared with 8% (160 of 1931) women speakers in societies without a diversity effort (OR 2.6 [95% CI 2.1 to 3.1]; p < 0.001). Although the percentage of women in speaking roles was proportional to society membership overall, our study identified opportunities to improve gender representation in several societies and in technical versus nontechnical sessions. Positioning more women in leadership roles and developing stated diversity efforts are two interventions that may help societies improve proportional representation; we recommend that all societies monitor the gender representation of speakers at their annual meetings and direct conference organizing committees to create programs with gender equity. Society leadership, national oversight committees, invited speakers, and conference attendees all contribute to the layers of accountability for equitable speakership at annual meetings. National steering committees such as the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons Diversity Advisory Board should monitor and report conference speaker diversity data to create systemwide accountability. Conference attendees and speakers should critically examine conference programs and raise concerns if they notice inequities. With these additional layers of accountability, orthopaedic surgery annual meetings may become more representative of their society members.

Introduction: Annual scientific meetings are intended in part to provide initial dissemination of research findings directly to meeting participants. However, the eventual publication of research findings is important for dissemination to the broader medical and scientific communities. The Limb Lengthening and Reconstruction Society: ASAMI–North America (LLRS) annual meetings showcase important research and case studies in the field of limb reconstruction pertinent to an international community of surgeons. The purpose of this analysis is to determine the publication rates of abstracts from recent LLRS annual meetings. Materials and Methods: Annual meeting programs from six LLRS annual meetings from 2014 to 2021 were cataloged. Listed abstract titles and authors were then queried in PubMed, Google Scholar, and the Journal of Limb Lengthen and Reconstruction to determine if a corresponding work was published journal up to December 2022 and time to publication. Results: During all studied annual meetings, 249 abstracts were presented. By December 2022, 60% (161/269) were published. The longest time to publication was 6 years following the presented annual meeting, whereas the meantime to publication was 21 months. The top publishing journals were the Journal of Pediatric Orthopaedics, the Journal of Limb Lengthening and Reconstruction, and Strategies in Trauma and Limb Reconstruction. Discussion: The LLRS annual meeting abstracts lead to a corresponding publication at rates revealing other orthopedic subspecialty societies. However, there are opportunities to improve these rates by continuing to promote the LLRS partnering journals including the Journal of Limb Lengthening and Reconstruction.

APhA2016; Advanced Preceptor Training; APhA member spotlight; BPS specialty certification

Category:OtherIntroduction/Purpose:Annual national society meetings for the American College of Foot and Ankle Surgeons (ACFAS) and American Orthopaedic Foot & Ankle Society (AOFAS) have long provided an important resource to disseminate the latest innovations, techniques, and research. However, unlike submitted research abstracts which are screened by a selection committee, there are scant guidelines for selected content experts to present educational content. To date, the ability to publish in a peer-reviewed journal bestows the ultimate validity of academic expertise on a particular subject matter and supports the expertise of the clinician. The purpose of this study was to evaluate for the first time, the incidence of scholarly publication in a peer reviewed journal for invited speakers from the ACFAS and AOFAS annual meetings from 2016 to 2020.Methods:Annual meeting programs for the ACFAS and AOFAS from 2016 to 2020 were compiled by two reviewers. Faculty lists and assigned lecture tract topics from each meeting were entered into password protected databases. Oral and poster abstracts, industry/society sponsored presentations, 'competitions', and 'other events' held during the annual meetings were excluded. Speaker specific variables included: gender, number of peer reviewed journal publications on the assigned subject matter (publications preceding the meetings date), study design, weighted total topic publication citations, and H-index. The weighted total topic publication citations was obtained by dividing the total citation counts for each manuscript on a particular subject by the number of years since its publication. The H-index, an author specific metric of both productivity and citation impact was obtained from searches of an online resource (http://www.scopus.com/freelookup). For the purposes of the present study, only foot and ankle surgeons (DPM, MD, DO) were included for assessment.Results:There were a total 1,028 invited presentations combined between AOFAS (158) and ACFAS (870) at the annual meetings fom 2016-2020. With combined data, 724 (70%) presentations were given by speakers with no publications in the subject matter while 300 (29.2%) were given by speakers with one or more publications. Lecture topics that had the highest percentage of speakers with publications in the subject matter included Wound Care/Limb Salvage (82.8%), Charcot (63.6%) and Total Ankle Replacement/Fusions (50%). Topics with the highest number of speakers without publications on the topic included Trauma (84%), Sports (80.3%) and Forefoot Elective (78.7%). Only the Trauma category of speakers had a statistically significant difference of predicted number of lectures by publication between no publications (3.7 lectures) and those with 1 or more publications (1.6 lecture) with p=0.04.Conclusion:Content expert presentations at national society specialty meetings are a crucial source of continuing education. What makes a speaker a content expert has yet to be defined but is important to consider. Perhaps factors such as peer reviewed publications in subject matter or the speaker's H-index are characteristics to consider in selecting content experts. In our survey of ACFAS and AOFAS annual meetings from 2016-2020, there were many topics were the vast majority of lectures were given by speakers without any publications and dispersed across the spectrum regardless of the speaker's H-Index ranking. Further criteria development is likely needed.

Higher gender diversity correlates with higher patient satisfaction, higher-quality medical education, increased research productivity, and higher revenues. Although the field of Japanese orthopaedic surgery includes the lowest proportion ofwomen and lags in gender diversity, reports on the current gender diversity status in academic activities are scarce. We investigated changes in women's participation in academic activities at the Japanese Orthopaedic Association (JOA) annual meetings over the past 11 years. Data on the percentage of women in the JOA membership during 2012-2022 were analyzed to ascertain the proportion of women as first authors of oral and poster presentations, abstract reviewers, invited lecturers, seminar lecturers, general abstract oral chairpersons, symposium chairpersons, and speakers. Regarding the ratio of women among the JOA members during 2012-2022, we relied on data provided by the JOA. Data related to other categories were collected from the abstract book presented at the JOA Annual Meetings between 2012 and 2022. We analyzed the time trend for women's proportions using the Cochran-Armitage trend test. A p-value < 0.05 was considered statistically significant. During 2012-2022, the percentage of female members (4.9-6.7%), poster first authors (2.7-4.3%), abstract reviewers (0-1.5%), general abstract oral chairpersons (0-2.3%), symposium chairpersons (0-3.6%), and symposium speakers (1.6-6.8%) had increased significantly (p < 0.05). Oral first authors (2.2-4.1%), invited lecturers (0-6.8%), or seminar lecturers (0%-6.7%) showed no trend. Women engaged in academic activities at all annual association meetings did not exceed the women's proportion among the association members. Although the proportion of women members of the JOA has gradually increased and more women are involved in its annual meetings, the proportion of female presenters, invited speakers, symposiasts, and chairpersons of oral and poster presentations is generally lower than that of women as JOA members. Members should be asked to raise awareness, including more active education of women as physicians in educational institutions and the creation of positive actions to select women as physicians for more important roles (chairpersons, educational speakers, and symposiasts) in the organization of annual meetings.

From the president of SMFM

The Cervical Spine Research Society Europe (CSRS-E) actively promotes scientific activities, the annual meeting being the most evident of them. The publication rate of oral and poster presentations at the annual meeting could be a measure for the success of the promotional activities. The publication rates of abstracts presented at the annual European meetings of the CSRS are unknown. The quality of the abstracts presented at a conference is reflected by the publication rate. A high publication rate is usually interpreted as representative of high scientific value of the conference. Poster and podium presentations from the 2007 to 2012 annual meetings were identified. Pubmed was used to search for the abstract title and/or the combination of authors to verify whether the data were published in a peer-reviewed journal. Abstracts were considered published if the data presented at the meeting were identical to that in the publication. The journals in which the data were published were identified, as well as the origin of the research centre. From 2007 to 2012 826 abstracts were featured at the CSRS Europe annual meetings. There were 236 podium presentations and 590 poster presentations. 42% of the podium presentations resulted in a publication, and 28% of the poster presentations led to a publication. Overall, 32% of accepted abstracts effectuated a publication in a peer-reviewed scientific journal. Abstracts from European research groups had a publication rate of 29% compared to 34% for abstracts from non-European research groups. Spine, European Spine Journal, Journal of Spinal Disorders and Techniques and J Neurosurgery Spine were the most common publication journals for the abstracts. The mean impact factor of the journals in which was published was 2.2. 42% of the abstracts that were accepted for podium presentation at the CSRS Europe resulted in a publication in peer-reviewed MEDLINE indexed journals. Publication rates are at the high end of the publication rate spectrum of abstracts accepted for European scientific meetings.

Continue Your Lifelong Education at the ADA Annual Meeting and Exhibition

Cardiac Calendar—2009 to 2011

Oral and poster presentations at annual national meetings of the Romanian Society of Gastroenterology and Hepatology (RSGH) provide a forum for education, communication and discussion of new research. However, for the wide-spread dissemination of the new research work, each presentation should be subsequently published as a full-text article in peer-reviewed, indexed journals. to evaluate the publication rate of full-text articles in peer-reviewed journals after being first presented as abstracts at two consecutive RSGH annual meetings. A retrospective review of all abstracts presented at the annual meetings in 2013 and 2014 was performed. PubMed and Google Scholar were searched using abstract titles, first author's name and affiliation, and key words from the title to identify whether an abstract resulted in a peer-reviewed publication. Abstracts published in full-text were subsequently assessed for study type, study center, topics, publication year, journals and their impact factors (IFs). We chose the 2013 and 2014 meetings to ensure a minimum two-year follow-up period since the last meeting for the publication as full-length articles. A total of 562 abstracts were presented (275 in 2013, 287 in 2014). There were 150 oral presentations (93 in 2013, 57 in 2014) and 412 poster presentations (182 in 2013, 230 in 2014). Fifty seven of them (10.1%) were published as full-text articles, among them 26 (17.3%) after oral presentations and 31 (7.5%) after poster presentations (P=0.001). University affiliation and original research work were most likely to be published. The average IFs of the journals which published the articles were 2.42 in 2013 and 1.87 in 2014. The publication rate for the annual RSGH meetings abstracts as full-text articles in peer-reviewed journals is very low compared to the analyses performed in gastroenterology or other medical specialities from other countries. It is not clear yet what are the factors responsible for the failure of publication.