Publication rates of papers presented at the Brazilian Orthopedic Meeting

OBJECTIVE To quantify the publication rates of the papers presented at the 2007 Brazilian Orthopedics Meeting (Congresso Brasileiro de Ortopedia - CBOT). METHODS Evaluation of the proportion of abstracts submitted by the various orthopedic subspecialties and according to the Brazilian states. Then, a Lilacs and PubMed search was performed in order to determine which presentations generated national or international published papers. RESULTS São Paulo and the Southeast region were responsible for the greatest number of presentations at the congress (54.1% and 68.3% respectively). Shoulder and Elbow were the subspecialty responsible for more presentations (13.8%). Among the 653 studies presented at the congress, 174 (26.6%) were published. Oral presentations obtained a publication rate 3.58 times higher than posters. CONCLUSION The CBOT publication rate is lower than 30%. Many of the papers presented at the CBOT does not pass the scrutiny of scientific journals and therefore should not be the only source of scientific update of the participants: Descriptive Epidemiologic.