Do we present abstracts on ethical, legal, cost-effectiveness and patient care issues at major gastroenterology congresses?
BACKGROUND
In the era of the new millennium, a lot of preclinical and clinical research is published. However, ethico-legal, cost-effectiveness and patient care issues are not addressed equally.


OBJECTIVE
To investigate whether abstracts presented at major international gastroenterology congresses refer to issues relevant to doctor-patient relationship, cost-effectiveness and care.


METHODS
We reviewed the abstracts on disk CD-ROMs of the United European Gastroenterology Week (UEGW) and the Digestive Disease Week (DDW), for the years 1998-2006. We used the following keywords: ethical/ethically, legal, consent, cost-effective/effectiveness, care, quality and tolerable/tolerability.


RESULTS
Over the study period, 1,612/20,018 (8.05%) and 764/45,628 (1.67%) abstracts including the above keywords were presented at UEGW and DDW congresses (p = 0.013), respectively. Statistically significant more abstracts containing separately any of the key words (apart from 'legal') were presented at the UEGW than at the DDW congress. There was a significant trend of increased referring to these key words over the study period for UEGW (p < 0.041) but not for DDW congresses (p = 0.70).


CONCLUSIONS
The abstracts presented at the UEGW refer to ethico-legal, cost-effectiveness and patient care issues more frequently than those presented at the DDW. There is a trend of increased referring to these subjects at the UEGW but not at the DDW.
Archavlis
E
E
Hepatogastroenterology Unit, 2nd Department of Internal Medicine - Propaedeutic, Attikon University General Hospital, Medical School, Athens University, Athens, Greece.
Triantafyllou
K
K
Adamopoulos
A
A
Emmanuel
T
T
Tzathas
C
C
Ladas
S D
SD
D000043:Abstracting and Indexing; D003226:Congresses as Topic; D003362:Cost-Benefit Analysis; D005762:Gastroenterology / Q000191:economics* / Q000941:ethics* / Q000331:legislation & jurisprudence; D006801:Humans; D005791:Patient Care