The Australian and New Zealand journal of surgery
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A critical evaluation of free paper abstracts accepted for the 1996 RACS Annual Scientific Congress.
Abstracts form a major part of medical information dissemination and a measure by which papers are accepted for meetings. Concerns have been raised about the quality of abstracts presented to the Annual Scientific Congress (ASC) and second, about the validity of the term 'scientific' to describe this meeting. ⋯ The quality of the presentation of abstracts was adequate but could clearly be improved, especially with regard to the specific instructions to authors. The ASC abstracts were significantly less scientific in content that those of the SRSA abstracts. The criteria used to select abstracts for the ASC should be reviewed and the title of the annual College meeting should be reconsidered.
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The purpose of this study was to examine existing data on women diagnosed with breast cancer in New South Wales in 1991 and 1992 and to describe surgical treatments received on an inpatient basis. ⋯ Women with a localized degree of spread living in non-metropolitan areas (Health Regions) were almost twice as likely to have a mastectomy as compared with similar women who were resident in metropolitan areas (Area Health Services). The concentration of radiotherapy services may have contributed to the urban/rural variation in breast-conserving therapy in New South Wales, but it is also likely that some of the variations that were observed may be a reflection of the failure of clinicians to use best current practice.