Publication rates of podium presentations at the American Shoulder and Elbow Surgeons annual open versus closed meetings 2008 to 2012

AIM: The purpose of this study was to analyze the publication rate for abstracts presented at podium presentations from the American Shoulder and Elbow Surgeons (ASES) annual open and closed meetings from 2008 to 2012. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Abstracts accepted as podium presentations for the open and closed meetings from 2008 through 2012 were followed. A search was performed using Google Scholar and PubMed for all published manuscripts. This analysis looks at abstracts categorized based on annual meeting (open versus closed) and by meeting year (2008–2012). Data including publication journal, publication date, and level of evidence were recorded. Descriptive statistics, t-tests, and odds ratios were performed with p < 0.05 significance. RESULTS: A total of 365 abstracts were accepted to the open and closed annual meetings from 2008 to 2012, with 49% and 51% presented in open and closed forums. A total of 222 (61%) were published within 3-years in peer-reviewed journals. No difference existed in 3-year publication rate between open and closed podium presentation meetings (112/178, 63% open; 110/187, 59% closed; p = 0.4229); however, presentations at closed meetings were more likely to be published after 3-years compared to open meetings (2/178, 2% open; 15/187, 12% closed; p = 0.002). Most common journal of publication was the Journal of Shoulder and Elbow Surgery (JSES) (50%). CONCLUSIONS: Podium abstracts presented at the open and closed annual meetings have publication rates of 63% and 59% with overall combined publication rates of 61% from 2008 to 2012. The high publication rate and high impact of publications speak to the exemplary educational value of ASES annual meetings.