Discrepancies Between Plastic Surgery Meeting Abstracts and Subsequent Full-Length Manuscript Publications.

BACKGROUND: The purpose of this bibliometric study was to assess the discrepancies between plastic surgery meeting abstracts and subsequent full-length manuscript publications.

METHODS: Abstracts presented at the Brazilian Congress of Plastic Surgery from 2010 to 2011 were compared with matching manuscript publications. Discrepancies between the abstract and the subsequent manuscript were categorized as major (changes in the purpose, methods, study design, sample size, statistical analysis, results, and conclusions) and minor (changes in the title and authorship) variations.

RESULTS: The overall discrepancy rate was 96 %, with at least one major (76 %) and/or minor (96 %) variation. There were inconsistencies between the study title (56 %), authorship (92 %), purpose (6 %), methods (20 %), study design (36 %), sample size (51.2 %), statistical analysis (14 %), results (20 %), and conclusions (8 %) of manuscripts compared with their corresponding meeting abstracts.

CONCLUSION: As changes occur before manuscript publication of plastic surgery meeting abstracts, caution should be exercised in referencing abstracts or altering surgical practices based on abstracts' content.

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