Industry Support of Key Opinion Leaders

Background Our objective was to determine whether industry support of researchers has a significant role in creating key opinion leaders (KOL). Methods First-authored publications of the 162 speakers who delivered the 2008 American Society of Anesthesiologists (ASA) refresher courses, a sample of KOLs, were comprehensively evaluated for acknowledgment of industry support and their relevance to each lecture. Results The data indicate that 3 of the 162 refresher course speakers had more than half of their publications supported by industry, whereas 106 of the 162 speakers disclosed no industry support. Overall, 9.4% of refresher course speaker first-authored publications disclosed industry support related to their lectures. Conclusions Our data indicate that industry-supported career development does not occur with the majority of key opinion leaders in anesthesiology, a subset of KOLs in medicine in general. The data do not support the notion of widespread industry support creating bias through career development of KOLs.