Abstract P5-22-13: Representation of surgical breast research at an interdisciplinary oncology conference
Authors: Shuford RA , Dulaney CR , Wallace A 
Published: February 2018

Background: The treatment of breast cancer requires an interdisciplinary approach, involving the fields of surgery, radiation oncology, medical oncology, pathology and radiology. The roles of various specialties may differ in the local versus metastatic setting. Despite the importance of collaborative care, significant disparities remain in federal funding of research among different medical specialties. The purpose of this analysis is to evaluate the representation of the surgical specialty at an interdisciplinary oncology research conference.

Methods: All electronically available abstracts in the breast cancer local, regional, adjuvant or breast cancer metastatic categories at American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) 2017 annual meeting were reviewed. All abstracts containing the word “breast” in the title of other relevant categories were also included. These categories included developmental therapeutics, patient and survivor care, brain metastases, cancer prevention/hereditary genetics/epidemiology, tumor biology, health services/clinical informatics/quality of care. Only abstracts in these categories that were presented via poster or oral presentation at the annual meeting were included. The medical discipline, gender, and country of institution were recorded for each first and last author. Country of institution was recorded based on abstract reported affiliation. Gender and medical discipline were recorded based on information from academic and industry profiles available online.

Results: A total of 301 breast cancer posters (n = 276) and oral abstracts (n = 25) were presented at ASCO 2017. The majority of first (56.8%) and last (56.1%) authorships were from institutions in the United States. Geographic distribution of surgical first authors was as follows: 50.0% United States, 13.9% Europe and 36.1% Asia. While medical oncology represented the majority of first (59.5%) and final authorships (61.8%), surgery was underrepresented at 12.0% of first and 9.0% of final authors. When only non-metastatic breast cancer related abstracts were included (n = 142) surgical representation improved for both first (18.3%) and final (14.1%) authorship. While low in comparison to medical oncology, representation for the field of surgery was better than that of radiation oncology (2.3% first and 2.0% last authors), pathology (2.7% first and 3.3% last authors), and radiology (1.7% both first and last authors). In the entire cohort, female researchers were well represented as first authors (50.8%), but less often as final authors (41.9%). Representation of female surgeons was variable based on authorship: 61.1% of surgical first authors were female, but only 37% of surgical final authors were women.

Conclusions: The treatment of breast cancer requires a multidisciplinary approach. However, despite the collaborative nature of care, researchers in the field of surgery were less likely to present scholarly activity at ASCO 2017. This is likely multifactorial, and warrants further research to identify barriers and facilitators of surgical participation in the conduct and reporting of breast cancer surgical research.

Citation Format: Shuford RA, Dulaney CR, Wallace A. Representation of surgical breast research at an interdisciplinary oncology conference [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the 2017 San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium; 2017 Dec 5-9; San Antonio, TX. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2018;78(4 Suppl):Abstract nr P5-22-13.