The academic impact of 20 years of Irish otolaryngology society conferences.

BACKGROUND: & Purpose: The Irish Otolaryngology Society (IOS) conference takes place annually. This conference allows surgeons and surgical trainees from Ireland and abroad an opportunity to showcase research ideas from their respective centres. This allows them to disseminate results, accept critique, and obtain different perspectives. We sought to examine research presented at the IOS meetings over 20 years. We aimed to analyse the publication rates, impact factor of journals, and citation rates of presented abstracts. METHODS: All oral presentations from IOS conferences were analysed between 2000 and 2019. Presentation titles and authors were searched using Pubmed, Google Scholar and Research Gate. We identified scientific publications which resulted from the research presented and the characteristics of each publication. RESULTS: Of 703 presentations made at the conferences spanning 20 years, 30.15% (n = 212) went on to publish their research averaging 19 citations per publication. Median time to publication was 2 years (-1-11). Each year there have been an increasing number of oral presentations with a declining publication rate. CONCLUSION: The Irish otolaryngology society meeting is a high-quality meeting with comparable publication rates to similar international conferences. Despite this, many presentations do not have any lasting impact as they are not published. The increasing pressure for trainees to rapidly present research projects without emphasis on completion of projects may explain the declining publication rate. Our study highlights the importance of completing high-quality research projects through publication. Meaningful conclusions from these projects can add to the body of knowledge and contribute to evidence-based practice.

Outcomes of kidney transplantation in Alport syndrome compared with other forms of renal disease.

INTRODUCTION: Alport syndrome is an inherited renal disease characterized by hematuria, renal failure, hearing loss and a lamellated glomerular basement membrane. Patients with Alport syndrome who undergo renal transplantation have been shown to have patient and graft survival rates similar to or better than those of patients with other renal diseases. METHODS: In this national case series, based in Beaumont Hospital Dublin, we studied the cohort of patients who underwent renal transplantation over the past 33 years, recorded prospectively in the Irish Renal Transplant Registry, and categorized them according to the presence or absence of Alport syndrome. The main outcomes assessed were patient and renal allograft survival. RESULTS: Fifty-one patients diagnosed with Alport syndrome in Beaumont Hospital received 62 transplants between 1982 and 2014. The comparison group of non-Alport patients comprised 3430 patients for 3865 transplants. Twenty-year Alport patient survival rate was 70.2%, compared to 44.8% for patients with other renal diseases (p = .01). Factors associated with patient survival included younger age at transplantation as well as differences in recipient sex, donor age, cold ischemia time, and episodes of acute rejection. Twenty-year graft survival was 46.8% for patients with Alport syndrome compared to 30.2% for those with non-Alport disease (p = .11). CONCLUSIONS: Adjusting for baseline differences between the groups, patients with end-stage kidney disease (ESKD) due to Alport syndrome have similar patient and graft survival to those with other causes of ESKD. This indicates that early diagnosis and management can lead to favorable outcomes for this patient cohort.

What Happens to the Principles of Evidence-Based Practice When Clinicians Become Educators? A Case Study of the Learning Styles Neuromyth.

Introduction: The approach of matching teaching practice to individual student "Learning Styles" has been repeatedly shown to be ineffective, even harmful. Yet, it appears a majority of educators believe it to be an effective approach. The status of Learning Styles theory in health professions education is unclear. Method: We surveyed health professions educators to determine whether they believed that Learning Styles theory is effective and whether this belief translates to action. We also test knowledge of Learning Styles theory. Results: 87.4% of participants are familiar with Learning Styles, but knowledge about specific models varies. 69.9% of participants believed that Learning Styles theory is effective, but only one-third of them were actually using it. Discussion: More effort is required to emphasise the importance of evidence-based educational awareness and practice in the healthcare community. As is the case with clinical practice, a culture of promoting pedagogy validated by the scientific method should be the norm. Supplementary Information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s40670-023-01849-1.