Publication rates for abstracts presented at the British Association of Plastic Surgeons meetings: how do we compare with other specialties?

We present a retrospective study of the publication rates of articles presented to five meetings of the British Association of Plastic Surgeons between 1995 and 1999. The PubMed database (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/PubMed/) was searched using the presenterʹs name and key words from the abstract. Publication rates varied from 23% for the Winter Meeting of 1999 to 54% for the Winter Meeting of 1997. The mean time lag from presentation to publication varied between 13 and 25 months (range: 1–46 months). These results are comparable to those found in some other medical specialties.