Are P values and statistical assessments in poster abstracts presented at annual meetings of Taiwan Society of Anesthesiologists relative to the characteristics of hospitals?
BACKGROUND
Many anesthesiologists in medical centers (MC) or in anesthesiologist-training hospitals (ATH) are accustomed to present their research data in the form of poster abstracts at the annual meetings of Taiwan Society of Anesthesiologists (TSA) to represent their academic gainings in a designated period of time. However, an orphaned P value without mentioning the related specified statistical test has frequently been found in these articles. The difference in presentation of statistical test after P value between MC/ATH and non-MC/non-ATH in recent three TSA consecutive annual meetings was explored in this article.


METHODS
We collected the proceedings handbooks of TSA annual meetings in a period spanning 3 yrs (2003 to 2005) and analyzed the hospital characteristic of first institute-byliner in the poster abstract. Data were analyzed with Fisher's exact test and statistical significance was assumed if P < 0.05.


RESULTS
Included were 101 poster abstracts with byliners of 20 hospitals. Only 2 of the 20 hospitals were accredited as non-ATH and 4 as non-MC. There were 64 (63%) abstracts without specified statistical test after P value and no significant difference was found among each category. (P = 0.47 in ATH vs. non-ATH and P = 0.07 in MC vs. non-MC).


CONCLUSIONS
The basic concept of P value with specified statistical test was not applicable comprehensively in poster abstracts of the annual conferences. Based on our wishful intention, we suggest that the anesthesia administrators and senior anesthesiologists at ATH or MC, and the members of the committee responsible for running academic affairs in TSA, should pay attention to this prodigy and work together to improve our basic statistics in poster presentation.
Lee
Fu-Jung
FJ
Department of Anesthesiology, Taichung Veterans General Hospital, Taichung, Taiwan, ROC.
Wu
Chih-Cheng
CC
Peng
Shih-Yen
SY
Fan
Kuo-Tung
KT
D000043:Abstracting and Indexing; D000046:Academic Medical Centers; D000776:Anesthesiology; D003226:Congresses as Topic; D003627:Data Interpretation, Statistical; D006784:Hospitals, Teaching; D006801:Humans; D012955:Societies, Medical