Publication of papers presented in a Brazilian Trauma Congress.

Objective: To assess the proportion of papers presented at the XXI Panamerican Congress of Trauma, VIII Congress of the Brazilian Society of Integrated Assistance to the Traumatized (SBAIT) and X Brazilian Congress of Trauma Leagues (CoLT) that were published in full.
Methods: In the events cited, based in Campinas in 2008, 347 papers abstracts of were presented and published. To evaluate the proportion of complete published works a retrospective observational study was conducted, reviewing the biomedical databases PubMed and SciELO, with support from Google, from the title of the abstracts and list of authors.
Results: Of 347 papers considered, 25 (7.3%) were from foreign services and 322 (92.7%) national. Ten (2.9%) papers were published, of which six (1.7%) of nursing and four (1.2%) medical. Among these, four thesis publications were identified and only one international work has been published.
Conclusion: Despite a large number of papers presented at trauma conferences in Brazil, the publications in this area are rare. The academy and the societies of surgery need to encourage the submission of scientific papers even before the presentation in Congresses in order for them to be evaluated for publication in indexed journals.