Introduction:

The American Urological Association (AUA) annual meeting serves as a large platform for unpublished research. Among the selected abstracts, podium presentations represent the most impactful submissions. Furthermore, between large meeting attendance and promotion through social media, authors are able to disseminate their findings to a potentially large audience prior to final manuscript publication. While all AUA abstracts do undergo peer review and scoring, it is not with the same level of scrutiny that full-length manuscripts receive. Thus, we have investigated the publication rates, impact factors, and time to publication of urologic oncology podium presentations at the AUA.

Methods:

We reviewed 875 podium presentation abstracts from the 2017 AUA Annual meeting, of which 394 (45.0%) were classified as urologic oncology. We chose 2017 to allow for a 3-year window for publication. Abstracts were assessed for subsequent publication between January 1, 2015 and May 31, 2020 with a pre-determined PubMed search protocol. Abstract authors were searched for individually, with key terms being added sequentially until <30 results were generated in PubMed. Each search result was then reviewed until a matching publication was found. Abstracts were deemed published if at least 1 author of the presented abstract was a manuscript author and/or at least 1 conclusion in the presented abstract was included in the conclusions of the publication. Publication rates, time to publication, and 2019 journal impact factor were collected (median with interquartile range [IQR]). Cumulative incidence curves illustrated publications with respect to time.

Results:

Of 394 urologic oncology podium presentations at the 2017 AUA, 228 (57.9%) focused on prostate cancer, while 81 (20.6%) and 58 (14.7%) presentations focused on kidney and bladder cancer, respectively (Figure 1). Overall, 211 (53.6%) podium presentations were published. Median time from presentation to publication was 13.55 months (IQR: 7.50-21.53). 57 (14.5%) podium presentations were published prior to the 2017 AUA meeting. The number of articles published at 1, 2 and 3 years after the meeting was 90, 170 and 202, respectively (Figure 2). The median journal impact factor of all published works was 3.37 (IQR: 2.70-5.93).

Conclusion:

Roughly half of the urologic oncology podium presentations appeared as peer reviewed publications within 3 years of the 2017 AUA. Despite being considered the most competitive and well-regarded of submitted abstracts, almost half of these projects were not published in peer reviewed journals. Thus, we caution providers that data presented at meetings must be evaluated carefully prior to promotion or adoption into practice.

Funding: N/A