Scientific papers presented at the 2000-2001 European Society of Gastrointestinal and Abdominal Radiology (ESGAR) meetings: publication rates during the period 2000-2004.

The aim of this study was to investigate the rate at which abstracts orally presented at the ESGAR 2000 and 2001 meetings were published between 2000-2004, and to identify predictive factors of publication. The abstracts of ESGAR meeting presentations were reviewed and classified according to organ, modality, type of design, country of origin of the studies and basic categories of diagnostic or interventional. The presentations were searched for publication in Medline-indexed journals using the PubMed server. The publication rates of the presentations, the time period between the presentation and publication, and the journal in which the article had appeared were investigated. An overall number of 109 publications were found originating from 276 presentations (39.5%). The median and inter-quartile range [IQR] between the abstract presentation and subsequently full publication was 18 months [1.0 -53.0]. The journal with the highest number of derived articles from abstract presentation was European Radiology (n=21, 19.2%). Retrospective studies were found to be more frequently published than prospective studies (p=0.001). The publication rate did not show any statistically significant difference between groups of other classifications. The publication rate of studies orally presented at ESGAR meetings was 39.5%. No specific variable other than the type of design of the studies appeared to influence the publication rate.