The impact of an ethics focused submission platform on acceptance of abstracts with the correct ethics committee oversite to Euroanaesthesia

BACKGROUND: A study published in 2018 highlighted deficiencies in the ethical review of abstracts submitted to and accepted for the annual Euroanaesthesia congress of the European Society of Anaesthesiology and Intensive Care (ESAIC). This was a known problem across congresses and journals. The submission platform for abstracts was redesigned to be more ethically focused in 2019. OBJECTIVES: The purpose of this study was to ascertain the success of the new abstract platform by analysing all abstracts submitted to the 2024 congress and assessing whether, when indicated, accepted abstracts had the appropriate ethical oversight in terms of review or waivers from an ethics committee. The results would then be compared with the 2015 results. DESIGN: Retrospective observational study. SETTING: All abstracts successfully submitted via the online platform for the 2024 Euroanaesthesia congress were analysed. DATA ANALYSED: 1394 abstracts submissions. INTERVENTIONS: With the new platform in place for 5 years, abstracts were assessed for appropriate ethical review and designated as being "enhanced", "appropriate" or "substandard" based on established criteria for the involvement of ethics committees. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: The primary outcome was the number (%) of abstracts accepted with substandard ethical committee oversight. This was then compared with the 2015 results. RESULTS: 7.3% of accepted abstracts in 2024 had substandard ethical oversight. This is a significant improvement from 2015 when 25.8% were identified as being deficient (P < 0.00001). In 2015, only 2.7% of the total number of engagements with the abstract submission platform were abandoned. After introduction of the mandatory ethical declaration fields, when failure to comply with ethical requirements would prevent abstract submission, abstracts abandoned on the platform rose to 9% in 2024 (P < 0.00001). CONCLUSIONS: The introduction of an ethics-focused abstract submission platform has significantly decreased the number of abstracts with deficient ethical oversight accepted to a large international congress. TRIAL REGISTRATION: As a retrospective service evaluation, formal trial registration was not required.