At the annual congresses of the European Association of Urology (EAU) and the International Continence Society (ICS) many clinicians and scientists present their recent research work.The aim of our study was to find out what proportion of all abstracts on functional urology published at the EAU and ICS were published as full papers.

All abstracts published between 2015 and 2019 at the EAU and the ICS Congress were selected  according to the following functional urology keywords and included in the statistics: Benigne Prostate Hyperplasie (BPH); Bladder Outlet Obstruction (BOO); Bladder Pain Syndrome (BPS); Chronic Pelvic Pain Syndrome (CPPS); Erectile Dysfunction (ED); Interstitial Cystitis (IC); Lower Urinary Tracts Symptoms (LUTS); Nocturia; Stress Urinary Incontinence (SUI); Underactive/Overactive Bladder Syndrome (U/OAB).
For our analysis, the abstracts were taken from the respective issues of the ICS and for the EAU Congress from the European Journal of Urology Supplements. A Pubmed search was carried out to find out if there was a publication in a journal.Only abstracts with, same or very similar title and at least one identical author  between the congress abstract and the abstract published in a journal were included in the statistics. We determined the mean IF of the Journals that published the abstracts. 
A discrepancy score from 0-3 was also created, which shows how far the abstract deviates from the publication in a journal. (1)

GRADE 0: same data, content and conclusions
GRADE 1:   2 or more slightly different dates but same content and conclusion
GRADE 2:  Data similar, at most one additional content and adjusted conclusion
GRADE 3:  Further investigation based on abstract research, more data, more content, same or 
different conclusion.

In 2015-2019, a total of 6759 abstracts were presented at the EAU Congress, 546 of which included functional urology. Of these, 288 were published in a journal.
A total of 3246 abstracts were presented at the ICS Congress from 2015-2019, 722 of which included the topic of functional urology. Of these, 411 abstracts were published in a journal. Of all abstracts with the subject of functional urology presented at the EAU congresses,  75% were published in 2015, 56% in 2016 and 64% in 2017. In addition, in 2018, 44%, and in  2019 43% were published. In comparison to the ICS published 62% in 2015, around 54% in the following year 2016, 57% in 2017 and around 54% in 2018. In 2019 about 57% were published.
In summary, for the years 2015-2019, an average of 53% of the EAU functional urology abstracts  were published. For the same period, 57% of the functional urology abstracts presented at the ICS were published.
From 288 published abstracts of the EAU congress 59 abstracts included the topic of urinary incontinence, 61 the topic of under/overactive bladder and 87 the topic of LUTS. Of the 411 published abstracts of the ICS congress 141 included the topic of urinary incontinence, 120 the topic of under/overactive bladder and 77 abstracts the topic of LUTS.
A large number of the abstracts were published in the same year or only after the respective congresses. 
In total, only 54 abstracts were published before the EAU Congress in the years 2015 - 2019, 234 in the same year or later.
Moreover, between 2015 and 2019, only 50 abstracts were published before the ICS Congress and 361 abstracts at the same year or later.
The average discrepancy score of the published ICS abstracts was constant at 0.5, compared to the score of the published abstracts from the EAU congresses, which was higher at 0.6.
The average IF of papers published from the 2015-2019 EAU abstracts  was 3.8. The IF for the papers published from the  ICS Congress abstracts was 3,4. 
Furthermore,  the publication rate of the EAU Congress decreased over the years compared to the publication rate of the ICS Congress, remained relatively constant.

The average IF of 3.8 and 3.4 show that the abstracts presented at the congresses meet high quality standards. Our results with a publication rate of over 50% are very good in comparison, nevertheless more than 40% were not published after their presentation at a congress. The publication rate has decreased from 2015-2019 at the EAU Congress, whereas the publication  rate of the ICS Congress has remained relatively constant. It should be noted, that our research  only based on pubmed, there could well be other publications from these abstracts on other platforms, which could affect the publication rate. A unique aspect of our study is that we created and analysed a discrepancy score that averaged 0.6 for the abstracts of the EAU Congress and 0.5 for the abstracts of the ICS Congress. The discrepancy score shows that the majority of the published abstracts correspond in content to the original abstracts that were presented at the respective congresses, in particular the results and conclusions were identical.

Our data shows that the topic of functional urology accounts for only a small percentage of all published abstracts at the EAU Congress, i.e. 8% of total, for ICS Congress i.e. 22%. 
Nevertheless, more than 50% of these abstracts presented at the EAU and ICS congress were published in peer reviewed journals.This acceptance rate illustrates the high quality of the abstracts

Ataei J, Bach C, Javan A, Vögeli TA, Grafe C, Rahnama'i MS. The Scientific Value of Abstracts on Prostate Cancer Presented at the European Association of Urology Congresses. Front Surg. 2021;8:683359.