Fate of abstracts presented at the annual meetings of the American association of clinical anatomists

A recent study examined the rate of full‐length research paper publication following abstract presentation at the British association of clinical anatomists (BACA) annual meetings. The accepted standard for research dissemination is peer‐reviewed publication following presentation at a national or international meeting. The study objectives were quantitative assessment of the abstracts presented at the American Association of Clinical Anatomists' (AACA) annual meetings with regards to the rate of subsequent full‐length publication and comparison to BACA publication rates. All abstracts presented at the AACA annual meetings between 2003 and 2010 were analysed. MEDLINE was searched to identify peer‐reviewed publications arising from each presented abstract. In total, 1,120 abstracts were presented with 22.9% (n = 257) subsequently published as full‐length research papers. The mean number of abstracts presented each year was 140.0 ± 35.9. The median time to publication was 16 months. Chi‐squared analysis showed the publication rate of abstracts presented at AACA (22.9%) was not statistically significantly different to BACA (20.4%) (P = 0.09). A total of 11.3% (n = 29) of the articles were published as full‐length research articles before presentation as an abstract at an AACA meeting compared to 5.4% of abstracts presented at a BACA meeting. These rates are lower but comparable to those of surgical specialty meetings. Further work should try to identify any concerning reasons for the reduced rate of abstract publication in anatomical research. Clin. Anat. 30:140–144, 2017. © 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Continuing Medical Education Activity in Echocardiography

Article Title: Transesophageal Echocardiographic Assessment of Pulmonary Veins and Left Atrium in Patients Undergoing Atrial Fibrillation Ablation (Echocardiography 2011;28:774)     

Impact of non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs on cardiovascular risk: Is it the same in osteoarthritis and rheumatoid arthritis?

Although large-scale population studies have shown that non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) increase the risk of myocardial infarction, this is not confirmed in patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA). Herein, we review the litterature on the differential effects of NSAIDs on cardiovascular risk in osteoarthritis (OA) versus RA and discuss possible explanations for this discrepancy. To assess a potential additive effect of age in non-RA populations, we compared weighted mean age between RA patients and unselected NSAID users included in cohort and case–control studies that estimate the cardiovascular risk of NSAIDs, assuming that the main indication for NSAID usage in elderly populations is OA. Our hypothesis that advanced age in osteoarthtitis compared to RA patients confounds the effect of NSAIDs on cardiovasular risk was not confirmed. Several other hypotheses that can be proposed to explain this counterintuitive effect of NSAIDs on the cardiovascular risk of RA patients are discussed. We conclude that patients with RA have a lower cardiovascular disease risk associated with the use of NSAIDs, probably due to the nature of their disease per se, until further research indicates differently.