Carmelo Giordano (1930-2016): a giant in Nephrology.

Carmelo Giordano (Carmine, Louis, Joseph Giordano) was born in Naples on August 23, 1930 in the house of Rafael and Anna Tirone He received the MD cum laude in 1954. He was Fellow and assistant to Professor Flaviano Magrassi and studied nephrology at the Peter Bent Brigham Hospital, University of Harvard in Boston, under the guidance of John P. Merrill (1958-1960). He was nominated Professor of Nephrology at the University Federico II, Naples in 1975 and Professor of Medicine at the Second University of Naples (1986-2002). The National Institutes of Health of the United States in Bethesda financed his research for more than 20 years. He started low protein alimentation (Giordano-Giovannetti diet according to Geoffrey M. Berlyne) with or without addition of amino acids and ketoacids and devised formula diets for CKD infants and children. He demonstrated that 85% of CKD patients receiving a 25 g protein diet were in positive nitrogen balance. Later he introduced the concept of energy load from dialysate in CAPD and the assessment of amino acid losses during hemodialysis and peritoneal dialysis. He also researched the minimum protein requirement under CAPD regimens. He synthesized, with Professor Renato Esposito, oxystarch and oycellulose and introduced the use of carbon at low temperature and its regeneration at 90°C. He introduced wearable and portable artificial kidneys. He died in Naples on May 12, 2016.

Fate of abstracts presented at the World Congress of Endourology: are they followed by publication in peer-reviewed journals?

PURPOSE: To estimate the acceptance rate of peer-reviewed journals, to describe the time course of subsequent full publication, and to identify those with characteristics associated with publication of the abstracts presented at the World Congress of Endourology (WCE). METHODS: All abstracts accepted for presentation at the 2001 and 2002 WCE meetings were identified from the published supplements to the Journal of Endourology. The subsequent publication rate for the corresponding studies was evaluated by scanning MEDLINE for the 5-year period after the meetings. RESULTS: Overall, 20.5% of the abstracts were followed by publication in peer-reviewed journals. Abstracts on transurethral, laparoscopic, and percutaneous procedures had the highest publication rates (25.5%, 25%, and 24.3%, respectively). Studies from North America had the highest publication rate (29.2%). The mean time to publication was 14.6 months. There was an 80% chance that an eventually published abstract was in print 2 years after presentation. The largest number of the reports were published in the Journal of Endourology (75 of 234; 32%), the official publication of the society that sponsors the WCE. CONCLUSIONS: Only one fifth of the abstracts presented at the WCE are ultimately published in peer-reviewed journals. Attendees should be aware of this limitation, and scientific committees should be encouraged to be more selective. Although presentation at major urological congresses constitutes an invaluable method for rapid scientific dissemination, abstracts contain data that usually are difficult to access and of questionable validity. In this respect, investigators are encouraged to publish their data.