Thread by @NicholasZaorsky

How to write a research abstract for presentation at a meeting

Presented at #ASTRO22 @ASTRO_org
@pipcosper #radonc

Tweetorial 🧵

This thread will review the key components of each abstract section and provide examples of some of the highest scored abstracts at #ASTRO22

Since our Twitter audience is diverse, I will also highlight key features in recent @NEJM NordICC abstract:
nejm.org/doi/full/10.10…

Abstracts are usually structured into 4 parts

The intro section should provide:
1, pertinent background
2, purpose with hypothesis (if applicable)

Often, the background is already known to content experts in your medical specialty and can be omitted.

The methods section provides details on what was done to address the purpose

If you have a clinical study, consider mentioning the PICOS criteria

Biostatisticians assess several features of the methods section

One caveat: retrospective comparative effectiveness research should not be used to address questions reserved for randomized trials.

For @ASTRO_org meeting, reviewers are instructed to give retrospective CER (eg, w SEER, NCDB) worse scores.

Here are some highly rated methods sections.

The results section is the most important part of the abstract.

Try to pack this section with numbers.

Here are some examples of well-written results sections

The conclusion should be brief and address the purpose

Here are some examples of good and bad conclusions.

NordICC has a short conclusion, though there is much to unpack.

Interesting discussion from the first author and @VPrasadMDMPH:

Writing a title:
make it short
relate it to the purpose, findings, conclusion

Here are the most common errors in abstracts

If you are tight on characters or words, here are methods to condense:

Thanks to these experts for improving our work
@DrSpratticus @felixfengmd @cwspeers @KimpleRandall @mwang_cwru @yilun_sun @EricLehrer @Samuel_Bakhoum @LeilaTchelebi @DrPaulNguyen

Thanks to @ARRO_org @ASTRO_org for the invitation to present at #ASTRO22

For related works, see this list of tweetorials: docs.google.com/document/d/19y…