International ISPRM Congress in Cartagena 2023: topics and recommendations

Background: The International Society of Physical and Rehabilitation Medicine—ISPRM—is the pre-eminent scientific and educational society for medical specialists in rehabilitation. Its mission is to optimize functioning and health-related quality of life and minimize disability in persons with medical problems. The World Congress remains the society’s face-to-face meeting to update topics related to disability and rehabilitation. This manuscript describes the academic proposals and abstracts submitted and accepted after peer review, sorting them out according to the Standardized Abstract Topic List of the ISPRM World Congress bidding guidelines. It also aims to give recommendations for future congresses. Methods: This study is a cross-sectional descriptive study of academic proposals and abstracts submitted to the ISPRM2023 Congress in Cartagena. To structure the academic program, the Congress Scientific Committee (CSC) opened 2 calls for wide-open international participation: one for academic proposals (Scientific sessions and workshops led by top experts) and another for abstract submissions inviting rehabilitation professionals in general, according to the ISPRM Congress classification of topics. Six members of the CSC assessed the academic proposals to ensure the representation of diverse topics and geographic areas. The abstracts were peer-reviewed following predefined quality criteria and assigned to 3 international juries according to their expertise. Results: Participants submitted 142 proposals in English and 42 in Spanish from 6 continents: North and South America, Europe, Africa, Asia, and Oceania. The Clinical Sciences category (58.7%) out of 138 accepted proposals was the most common. Of 703 submitted abstracts, 692 got accepted to present their work, but only 418 were presented on-site: 127 (30.4%) oral and 291 poster presentations. The distribution of the submitted abstracts showed substantial interest in clinical science and therapeutics (73.9%), followed by engineering and technology (9.1%), biomedical sciences (4.5%), and health policy and systems (4.5%). Conclusions: We made 8 recommendations for future congresses. It will be essential to review the topics involving emerging ones in physical and rehabilitation medicine that are gaining relevance, such as infectious diseases (COVID-19), cardiopulmonary disorders, metabolic diseases (obesity, osteoporosis), diagnostic and therapeutic ultrasound, and electrodiagnosis.