The Changing Emphasis in Clinical Research

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Abstract
The annual meetings of the American Federation Association of American Physicians (AAP), American Society for Clinical Investigation (ASCI), and American Federation for Clinical Research (AFCR) consist of programs selected from research abstracts submitted by clinical investigators. The content of the submitted abstracts and of the selected programs has been analyzed for the years 1953-1965. Each abstract was classified according to the presence or absence of human material, disease orientation, and patient-centered variables of correlation. During that time interval, despite a steady rise in the total number of submitted annual abstracts, the absolute numbers and percentage of patient-centered research has fallen from 46% to 18% in the AFCR and from 34% to 13% in the ASCI. Similar declines have occurred in the percentages of human and of disease-oriented research. By contrast, the percentage of non-human-non-disease abstracts has risen from 3% to 23% in the AFCR, and from 8% to 29% in the ASCI. The percentage of abstracts devoted primarily to "therapeutic" research has fallen from 5% (ASCI) and 10% (AFCR) to 2% for both organizations, and the absolute number of "therapeutic" abstracts has also been reduced. The main programs of the ASCI and AFCR have reflected the declining "clinical" trends, although some preferential selection seems to have been given in recent years, particularly in the ASCI, to "non-clinical" topics. The content of abstracts submitted to the AAP could not be analyzed. The programs of the AAP have regularly been more "clinical" than those of the AFCR or ASCI, but have also had a progressively decreasing "clinical" content.

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