Presentation and publication rates among women and men at AAO-HNS meetings

We attempted to assess the percentages of abstracts submitted to annual American Academy of Otolaryngology, Head and Neck Surgery (AAO-HNS) meetings from 2000 to 2004 by both women and men. We sought to determine the subsequent peer-reviewed overall publication rates for all submissions. We also studied trends of submission among female presenters and compared them to males.

Cross-sectional study.

Tertiary academic medical center.

2,463 total abstracts presented between 2000 and 2004 were searched in the computerized databases Medline and Pubmed in 2008. The published articles were examined by reviewers to assess publication rate, time to publication, gender of authorship and subspecialty of publication.

1,413 (57.35%) posters and 1,051 (42.65%) oral presentations were presented from 2000 to 2004. Of the 1,413 posters presented, 275 (19.46%) were presented by female first authors. The female first-author poster publication rate was 33.81%, while the male first-author poster publication rate was 36.99% (p = 0.353). Of 1,051 oral presentations, 154 (14.65%) were presented by female first authors. The male first-author oral presentation publication rate was 60.98%, while the female first-author oral presentation publication rate was 59.09% (p = 0.657). There were no statistical differences in time to publication for posters (p = 0.796) or oral presentations (p = 0.737) between the genders. The majority of female first-author submissions involved pediatric (29.94%) and general (17.88%) otolaryngology.

While women are increasingly drawn to otolaryngology, they represented less than 20% of total submissions at the annual AAO-HNS meetings from 2000 to 2004. Women more commonly submit poster than oral presentations. The eventual publication rates of abstracts and the average time to publication of presentations are equal between the genders.