Distribution Patterns and Publishing Rates of Oral Presentations Presented in National Neurology Congresses According to Diseases Between 2000-2017

Objective: Congresses are important for physicians to access up-to-date information. The papers presented in congresses provide access to current research topics in the field in a short time. In this study, we aimed to investigate the contribution of oral presentations (OP) that were presented at the Turkish National Neurology Congress (TNNC) organized by the Turkish Neurological Society to the literature.
Materials and Methods: OP presented in TNNCs between 2000-2017 were reviewed. The distribution of papers in terms of the main headings and their institutions were determined. Then, the names and presentation titles of the researchers were searched in PubMed and Google Scholar databases in Turkish and English and their publication rates were determined.
Results: In 17 years, a total of 1682 oral and 8065 poster presentations were accepted. Fourteen OPs were withdrawn. Of the OPs, 318 were in the field of demyelinating diseases (DMD), 305 on cerebrovascular diseases (CVD), 205 on epilepsy, 202 on neuromuscular diseases (NMD), 199 on headache, 183 on movement disorders, 112 on behavioral neurology, 20 on sleep disorders, 13 on pediatric neurology, and 119 on other diseases. Of the studies, 1253 were clinical studies, 226 were case reports, 130 were basic science studies, 84 were questionnaire studies, 70 were genetic studies, and 852 were prospective studies. One thousand two hundred eighty-six were from university hospitals and 338 from training and research hospitals. Six hundred six were published as articles. One hundred seventy-one were published in Turkish journals and 416 were published in SCI-E journals. Of the publications, 481 were presentations from university hospitals. Comparing the 2000-2009 and 2010-2017 presentations, presentations of NMD and sleep disorders increased, and the highest number of presentations were in the CVD and DMD groups in both periods. Presentations of headache and epilepsy were mostly published in journals.
Conclusion: To our knowledge, our study is the first to analyze neurology congress presentations in Turkey. It is noted that such analyses are performed in the literature mostly for 1-5 years, and our results are similar to those of other disciplinary studies conducted in our country and lower than those of international meetings. Incentive methods should be developed to increase the number of publications.