The ICS Scientific Committee recently met in Barcelona to review all abstract submissions for 2013. Dominic Turner and Ashley Brookes from the ICS office attended the meeting to provide scientific support.
1059 submissions were received and all abstracts were reviewed by at least 3 reviewers, both from the Scientific Committee and external reviewers from the Editorial Board of Neurourology and Urodynamics. The meeting lasted 3 days in which selections were made for the forthcoming Annual Meeting. An exciting programme of 40 podium presentations, 250 podium posters and 356 non-discussion posters was created, with 6 video abstracts also chosen for podium presentation.
In response to the very well received OAB debate session in Beijing the format of the State of the Art sessions has been crafted to give more debates and give more coherent themes to different days – from Basic Science, Surgery and Conservative Management there is something for everyone, with Abstract sessions topics relating to the State of the Art programme for each day. Since Beijing authors have been able to upload their posters onto the ICS website giving each poster much greater longevity and impact factor than just for the few days of the poster exhibition.
All abstract submitters have been notified of the status of their abstract. Those selected are required to confirm their abstract session slot by 21st May. Notifications of final abstract number and presentation details will go out to authors on the 28th May. The final programme will be published in mid-June. All reviewers agreed that the quality of the submissions this year was unparalleled and our exciting programme is set to make Barcelona a landmark meeting for ICS.