The Majority of Abstracts Presented at the American Association for Hand Surgery Annual Meetings Are Later Published

Objectives The American Association of Hand Surgery (AAHS) is a national organization devoted to advancing hand surgery. It hosts an annual meeting with a podium and poster presentations highlighting relevant research. To better understand the value of AAHS, this study aimed to report the publication rate of AAHS annual meeting presentations from 2017-2020 and describe the traits of published abstracts. It was hypothesized that at a minimum of two years of follow-ups, most AAHS meeting presentations would be published, and the publication rate would be positively correlated with a higher level of evidence (LOE) and podium presentation. Methods AAHS meeting abstracts from 2017 to 2020 were collected from the AAHS website. PubMed and Google Scholar were queried using titles, keywords, and authors. Titles, author lists, abstracts, and journal qualities of successfully published articles were recorded. Results Between 2017 and 2020, 1,268 abstracts were presented at the AAHS annual meeting, and 786 (62%) were published at least 45 months after presentation. Publication rates for podium presentations (rate 68%, 280/413) were higher than posters (rate 59%, 506/855). Surprisingly, level IV abstracts (rate 78%, 296/378) were significantly more likely to be published than level I abstracts (rate 58%, 22/38, P<0.001). Podium presentations had similar LOE, were published in journals with a similar impact factor, and had a similar number of citations relative to poster presentations. Conclusions Most presentations at the 2017-2020 AAHS annual meetings were published, demonstrating the value of the AAHS annual meeting. Podium presentations were published more often than posters but showed few other significant differences. The high publication rate of level IV relative to the level I abstracts may result from several factors, such as the extra time and complexity required to complete level I studies and the sample’s predominance of level IV studies. These findings underscore the value of AAHS podium presentations for disseminating research.