Brazilian abstracts presented at the American Urological Association annual meetings: contribution, publication rates, and comparison with oncology abstracts.

PURPOSE Scientific research originating from Brazil appears to be rising in several medical fields. Research results are often presented at scientific meetings before publication in peer-reviewed journals. We investigated the publication rate of Brazilian studies presented in American Urological Association (AUA) meetings and compared with the rate of publication of Brazilian oncological studies presented at the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) meetings. MATERIALS AND METHODS a hand search of 12,454 abstracts presented at aua meetings 2001-2007 was conducted. abstracts for which at least two-thirds of institutions were from brazil were considered as brazilian. final publication was searched in pubmed and lilacs databases. oncological abstracts were also hand searched in the asco meetings proceedings in the same years. RESULTS There was no significant temporal trend in the proportion of AUA studies originating from Brazil along those 7 years. A total of 195 abstracts (1.57%) were from Brazil. One hundred (51.3%) abstracts were published in full, and the estimated 5-year publication rate was 48.2%. There was a progressive increase in publication rates for studies categorized as video, poster, and podium presentations. Considering abstracts presented in years 2001-2005, urologic publication rate was significantly higher than for abstracts presented at the ASCO meeting. CONCLUSIONS Our results suggest that the Brazilian contribution to AUA meetings is at a plateau and that the Brazilian literature contribution is greater in urology than in oncology. Efforts must be invested towards raising this plateau and understanding qualitative aspects of the urology scientific output from Brazil.