A significant proportion of anesthesia meeting abstracts are subsequently published as full articles, primarily in anesthesia journals, with an average lag time of 8 to 12 months.
Of 55 abstracts presented at the 1979 annual meeting of the International Anesthesia Research Society (I.A.R.S.) 24 (43.6%) and of 62 abstracts presented at the 1980 annual meeting of the I.A.R.S. 25 (40.3%) were published by July 1, 1981. Of 324 abstracts presented at the 1978 annual meeting of the American Society of Anesthesiologists (A.S.A.) 98 papers (30.1%) were published by January 1, 1981. Eighty-two percent of the I.A.R.S. meeting papers and 66.7% of the A.S.A. papers were published in anesthesia journals, and the rest of the papers appeared in publications representing a variety of other disciplines. The average lag time between publication of the abstract and publication as an article was 8.2 months for I.A.R.S. abstracts and 12.2 months for A.S.A. abstracts. By July 1, 1981, four 1979 I.A.R.S. abstracts were filed in Science Citation Index (SCI) as cited reference and by January 1, 1981, fifty-six 1979 A.S.A. abstracts were filed.
Meranze et al. (Sat,) studied this question.