[European impact of Spanish Internal Medicine]

To evaluate the scientific contributions of spanish specialists in Internal Medicine in the Congresses of the European Federation of Internal Medicine (EFIM) during the period from 1997 to 2003.

Communications and posters from the books of abstracts of the last four EFIM meetings held in Maastricht (1997), Florence (1999), Edinburgh (2001) and Berlin (2003) were studied. The field of research was recorded and case reports were excluded.

1,616 scientific communications were taken in account. Two percent (31) were from countries outside Europe. Spain ranked first with 487 communications (30.1%), followed by Italy (11.9%), France (10.5%) and Portugal (10.2%). In Spain, Madrid, Galicia, Andalusia and Valencia were the regional communities with the most contributions. The main fields of research were cardiovascular diseases and infectious diseases-AIDS infections.

The speciality of Internal Medicine in Spain is very active in terms of scientific contributions as judged by the number of communications to the european congresses.