Saving the poster session

by John P. Breinholt, MD, FSCAI

At the Society for Cardiovascular Angiography and Interventions Scientific Sessions, I was eating lunch with a group of familiar faces — cardiologists spanning a few generations — when a few current fellows wandered over from the poster session in the exhibition hall. The report from the abstract presenter: No one came to see her poster. Not one attendee.

Investigators who bring their posters to medical conferences have worked hard to generate data and have invested time to prepare those data for wider consumption. If we are going to continue to accept abstracts in this format, then it is important to show respect for their work. And if we are to continue to have these poster sessions, we should find ways to showcase the research.

John P. Breinholt

But it is a challenge, as medical conferences increasingly expand to cover more content, often in innovative new ways and often in fewer days. It begs the age-old question of how to pack everything into a few days.

I have seen the multitude of ways that meeting planners have attempted to alter poster sessions to improve attendance. The first meeting at which I presented, until recently, featured only oral presentations, but added posters a few years ago to accommodate more abstracts. Regardless, the problem of poster abstracts being seen continues to be a challenge across meetings.

One common strategy has been to place posters in the exhibit hall. Other strategies have included poster “sessions” during the lunch hour when people are likely to be wandering the exhibit hall or other locations. Inevitably, competing lunch symposia or late-running sessions invariably cut into the audience for these research presentations.

Lately, we have seen attempts to liven up poster presentations with e-posters or other electronic versions of the traditional posters. These are different, save money from printing costs and maybe save the rainforest, but I am not sure whether any of these strategies has increased attention to posters.

At the American College of Cardiology Scientific Sessions in March 2015, two elements of the poster session were different than what is traditionally seen:

Oral posters: A hybrid between a poster and an oral abstract, where the presenter shows their poster on a large screen and can zoom in on various aspects until they have covered the entire poster. The time for presentation is usually shorter than an oral abstract, but there is a formal question-and-answer period not dissimilar from the oral abstract session. These presentations can be somewhat awkward, since moving the single slide “poster” through this magnifier can make it difficult to follow. However, it ends up being a similar experience to presenting your poster to the people who do happen to stop by the posters; you walk them through your poster and they ask you questions.
No competing oral sessions: A schedule focused on no oral sessions at the time when oral posters were being presented. This example was the congenital heart disease session, so it was easier to eliminate conflicts; however, if it had pertained to another subsection, that subsection could just as easily have had the schedule open to the poster session. As a result, attendees wanting to stay with one track had no competing sessions to draw them away from the posters. The oral presentations were packed with people asking questions, and therefore attention. The indirect result was that all of the attendees were in the poster area and able to also look at the other posters in the area.

This effort succeeded in improving attendance at the peer-reviewed abstract sessions that happened to be posters. What ideas can we generate to help meeting organizers improve the poster presentation for young (mostly) investigators?

John P. Breinholt, MD, FSCAI, is a pediatric interventional cardiologist and division director of pediatric cardiology at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston. Breinholt is currently participating in the SCAI Emerging Leader Mentorship (ELM) Program and serves as co-chair of the Interventional Career Development (ICD) Subcommittee.

Disclosure: Breinholt reports no relevant financial disclosures.