[The fate of the abstracts presented to the biannual meetings of the French National Society of Internal Medicine].
OBJECTIVE
Medical meetings give the opportunity to present oral communications or posters to the attending participants. However, the peer-reviewed publication of a full article allows to reach a wide readership.


CONCLUSIONS
The survey that was performed on the oral communications and posters presented at the 43rd meeting of the French National Society of Internal Medicine, December 2000, showed that amongst the 303 selected podium presentations and posters, only 82 (27%) were published during the five following years. Podium presentations were more likely to be published than posters (36% versus 22%).


CONCLUSIONS
Many oral communications and posters that are presented in medical meeting are not followed by the publication of a peer-reviewed full article despite the modern means of communication. However, this issue is of paramount importance as beyond the legitimate personal satisfaction of a publication, the scientific and academic recognition are the ground of medical career achievement for many physicians.
Gaundong Mbéthé
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GL
Service de médecine interne, hôpital Saint-André, centre hospitalier universitaire de Bordeaux, 1, rue Jean-Burguet, 33075 Bordeaux cedex, France. gaundong@yahoo.fr
Grenouillet-Delacre
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M
Salmi
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LR
Mercié
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Longy-Boursier
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D000043:Abstracting and Indexing / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D003226:Congresses as Topic / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D003625:Data Collection; D005602:France; D006801:Humans; D007388:Internal Medicine / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D010380:Peer Review; D010506:Periodicals as Topic / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D011643:Publishing / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D012955:Societies, Medical