From abstracts to published articles: Assessing the scientific publications from the annual meetings of the German Spine Society (DWG) in 2017, 2018, 2019, and 2022.

Introduction: The annual meeting of the German Spine Society (DWG) serves as a platform for discussing the latest academic findings. This study assessed the scientific quality of these conferences by investigating the publication rate of abstracts presented at DWG Annual Meetings (2017-2019, 2022) in peer-reviewed journals and analyzing factors influencing publication rates.

Research question: How did the publication rates of the annual meeting of the DWG evolve, and what factors influenced them.

Material & methods: We reviewed all accepted oral and poster presentations and conducted a PubMed database search (up to 10/2023) to determine publication rates, time to publication, research type, and topic distribution.

Results: A total of 730 abstracts were presented, with 275 (37.6 %) published in peer-reviewed journals: 27.9 % (2017), 52.7 % (2018), 39.1 % (2019), and 29.9 % (2022). A subset of 61 (8.4 %) abstracts had already been published before the conference. The mean time to publication was 35.4 ± 22.3 months. Basic research and experimental studies constituted 22.1 % of abstracts, achieving a 44.1 % publication rate. Key research fields included spinal cord injury (16.9 %), biomechanics (14.8 %), spinal oncology (8.8 %), and bone and cartilage (4.4 %), while 55.1 % covered other spinal surgery topics.

Discussion & conclusions: With 37.6 % of abstracts published in PubMed-indexed journals, our findings highlight the scholarly impact of DWG meetings. These results reflect the scientific quality of submissions and provide insights for future improvements to enhance the DWG's research focus.