ISTH 2025
Congress Chronicle
See previous editions of the Congress Chronicle:
ISTH Congress Chronicle: Inside the ISTH Congress abstract process
December 2024
By: Guy Young, M.D.
ISTH 2025 Congress Chair
Welcome to the December edition of the ISTH Congress Chronicle, our bi-monthly newsletter leading up to the 2025 ISTH Congress in Washington, D.C. The previous editions are all available on the ISTH website and I encourage you to have a look at those as they all contain interesting information.
In this edition, I will discuss the abstract process, including how they get selected and share some of my personal experiences with abstracts. Mark your calendar: abstract submissions close on January 25, 2025 at 17:00 EST (U.S.). Learn more about abstract submission here.
How the abstract process works
The call for abstracts has just recently been sent out. While I am certain nearly all of you understand what an abstract is, nevertheless, I will offer my own definition. Essentially, an abstract is a brief written report of recently completed or ongoing research with the aim of informing the scientific community of important updates.
Depending on the scientific meeting, some or many of those will be selected for presentation at the meeting in a variety of formats (more details on the ISTH process below). Abstracts play a critical role at the Congress because they offer the latest research data and provide avenues for scientific discourse. For early career professionals, abstracts offer a golden opportunity to both introduce themselves to our community and to meet and network with peers, as well as with mid-career and senior members in the field.
Early in my career, abstracts played a critical role for me serving as an opportunity to meet peers, some of whom I have collaborated with for many years, and some of whom have become great friends as well. Not infrequently, you will leave the Congress with ideas for improving or advancing your research from the conversations you will have or the questions you get.
“Is my abstract worth submitting?”
For some early career individuals, there is sometimes the misconception that unless you are doing “hard” science (whatever that means) that you should not submit an abstract. In all honesty, some of my “least scientific” abstracts actually won awards—I kid you not.
You might view your “simple” lab project, your case series or your pilot clinical trial as not being, uh...“worthy” of an ISTH abstract, but the truth is, you never know what might happen. Oh, and you have nothing to lose other than some time and effort.
Abstract selection process
You might be wondering what happens to your abstract after you click submit. Following the abstract submission deadline, abstracts are classified by theme (e.g., category) and assigned to volunteer reviewers who are experts in each theme. Each reviewer will assign abstracts a score from 1-9. The lower scores indicate the stronger abstracts (yeah, I don’t know why it is that way and not my invention). Each abstract is typically reviewed by 5-7 reviewers.
There is also an opportunity for the reviewer to offer comments. Once the scoring is completed, the scores are averaged and all the abstracts are sorted by themes. From there, all abstracts are placed into a spreadsheet listing the abstracts from the top score to the lowest score. Believe it or not: this is barely the beginning of the process!
Next, the Theme Committees meet virtually and go through their spreadsheets to recommend which abstracts should be presented orally, which should be posters, and which should be presentation only (very few) or rejected (nearly zero and reserved only for those that don’t pertain to hemostasis or thrombosis—yes, that actually happens!) Are you still with me?
Making the final decision
In the final determination, the Annual Congress Planning Committee (ACPC) meets in late February 2025 to review each Theme Committee’s recommendations and make final adjudications.
While we generally follow the theme recommendations, there is an option of upgrading some abstracts to oral presentations and moving others down to posters. This, in part, may be to coalesce a group of abstracts together to make for a more unified session or it could be based on the ACPC’s interpretation of what we deem to be of higher scientific value.
Trust me, we put many hours and a lot of thought into this. We value your contributions to the Congress and treat each abstract with the care it deserves. Once we have all the oral abstract sessions selected, we are also careful to place them in the program so that similar themes do not overlap—it is literally like putting a puzzle together.
In early March, the notifications go out and you will know whether you will have an oral presentation or a poster. Again, it is only extremely rare abstracts that do not get selected for presentation at the meeting. Like I said earlier, you have nothing to lose!
Lastly, this year, we will try something new. We are going to select the top poster abstracts and offer an opportunity to give a brief oral presentation in the Exhibit Hall Product Theaters—this is in addition to the poster presentation.
A final word as we look ahead to the New Year
It is December and the holiday season is soon upon us. On behalf of the ACPC, I wish you all a happy holiday season regardless of which holiday you celebrate.
For those who don’t celebrate (and those who do), I hope you enjoy the shorter days, the sharper angle of the sun (which can make for great photography -- one of my hobbies) and getting bundled up in your cold weather gear. And to my dear friends in Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and other southern regions, it is your turn to enjoy the longer, warmer days of summer.
Enjoy the holiday season and I look forward to seeing you in the New Year!
ISTH pop quiz:
1. In a U.S. Election, the winners for the Senate, House of Representatives and nearly all other elected positions are chosen by popular vote, however the position of U.S. President is not elected this way. In the U.S, it is the winner of the most electoral votes with each state having a specific number of electoral votes. How are the number of electoral votes for each state determined?
a. Purely by the current population of the state
b. All states have an equal number of electoral votes
c. The sum of the number of House of Representative members plus the number of Senators each state has
d. By the population of the state determined in the last census (population count which is done every 10 years).
2. From prior quizzes, you know I love music and I also travel a lot. All of the following bands have the name of a city in their name, but which one is not a band?
a. The Nashville Predators
b. London Grammar
c. Birds of Tokyo
d. Phoenix
3. With the holiday season upon us, which of the following is true only for the year 2024?
a. Christmas and New Year’s Day fall on the same day of the week.
b. Christmas falls on the shortest day of the year in the Northern Hemisphere.
c. The full moon will coincide with Christmas Eve.
d. Christmas Day is also the first night of Hanukkah.
Answer key:
1. Answer: C. The total number of electoral votes is the sum of the number of representatives for each state (determined by the population of the state) and the two senators each state has regardless of population. Also, Washington, D.C. is not a state (see the quiz from October) and has no representation with Representatives or Senators, but it does get three electoral votes.
2. Answer: A. The Nashville Predators are a professional ice hockey team. Regarding the musical groups, the real answers are all great bands representing various styles of rock music. London Grammar are from London but formed at the University of Nottingham where they met. Despite the names, Birds of Tokyo are from Perth, Australia and Phoenix are from Paris, France. If you like rock music, give them a listen—I am sure you won’t be disappointed.
3. Answer: D. While Christmas Day of course always falls on December 25, Hanukkah moves around from late November to late December, which is an interesting quirk of the lunar calendar Judaism uses though with an occasional added full month. By coincidence this year, the first night of Hanukkah falls on Christmas Day. Choice A is not correct because Christmas and New Year’s Day are always on the same day of the week. The shortest day of the year is December 21 and the full moon this December will be December 15.
