[Fate of presentations given at German anesthesia congresses]

To evaluate the publication rate of abstracts presented during the German Anaesthesia Congress (DAK) in MEDLINE-listed journals in comparison to the publication rate of abstracts presented during the meeting of the European Society of Anaesthesiologists (ESA).

All abstracts of free papers (FP, orals) and posters of the 1994 DAK and the 1994 ESA meeting were included. Over a period of approximately 7 years (1993 to May 1999) the appearance of authors and abstracts topics in the literature were searched with the help of MEDLINE. Only original papers were included in the analysis.

All 322 abstracts (268 FPs and 54 posters) of the DAK and all 244 abstracts (81 FP and 163 posters) of the ESA were analyzed. A total 122 of the DAK abstracts (37.9% of all abstracts) and 111 of the ESA abstracts (45.5% of all abstracts) were published in MEDLINE-listed journals. Posters presented at the DAK were as published often (37%) as were oral presentations (38%). Of the 122 abstracts of the DAK that were published 71 (58.2%) were published in English (in 38 different journals) and 51 (41.8%) were published in German (in 8 different journals), whereas 102 (92%) of the ESA abstracts were published in english (in 42 different journals).

The overall portion of abstracts of the DAK published in MEDLINE indexed journals within 7 years was disappointing. The reasons for this may include deliberate avoidance of a publication (e.g. due to lack of interest to publish, no time) or low quality of the abstract that hinders publication in a MEDLINE indexed journal.