[What is the publication rate of papers presented at the French Association of Urology annual conferences?].

Unlabelled: The meeting of the French Association of Urology (AFU) occurs once a year. Some communications are consequently published in national or international journals. We analysed the criteria of publication of works communicated during the AFU meeting.
Material: We analysed all the communications of the 94th and the 95th meeting of AFU from years 2000 and 2001, identified from the Progrès en urologie supplements. We then asked Medline covering a period of time from January 1996 to December 2006 and then compared communications to similar published articles.
Results: The overall publication rate was 34.5%. Articles (38.6%) were published the year following the meeting but the main articles were published the following 2 years after the meeting (78.42%). The mean time for publication was 16.9months. The prospective studies had a publication rate of 44.1% versus 24.8% for retrospective studies. One article over five was published in Progrès en urologie (21.6%).
Conclusions: Only one third of communications of the French meeting of urology was then published. Twenty percent were published in Progrès en urologie. Different way could increase the publication rate. The time for publication, higher for this meeting than for others, may decrease with the new submission website.