Objective The fate of oral presentations presented at a palliative meeting has not been assessed to date. Our aim was to determine the number of peer-reviewed publications arising from the abstracts presented at the European Association for Palliative Care (EAPC) Congress Meeting, Aachen (2005).

Methods All abstracts (Oral and poster) presented at the EAPC Congress, Aachen (2005) were included in the study. Invited abstracts were excluded from the study. Pubmed search was performed to identify a matching journal article. Topics, country of origin, abstract type, type of journal and publication time (month–year) were tabulated and analysed.

Results At EAPC Congress Meeting, 661 abstracts were presented. After exclusion of 123 invited articles a total of 140 oral and 398 poster abstracts were presented EAPC Congress at Aachen in 2005. 230 (43%) abstracts were published as full paper in peer-reviewed journals (77 oral abstracts (55%) and 153 poster abstracts (38%)). Nearly fifth of articles were published in 6 months and quarter within 12 months. Thirty-nine per cent of articles were published within 36 months. Majority of articles were published in palliative journals (29%) followed by pain (18%), oncology (13%), medicine (8%) and psychiatry (4%) journals. Top five countries with maximum abstracts were UK (30%), Netherlands (9%), Germany (7%), Italy (5%) and Norway (5%). The conversion rate from abstract to publication for these countries was UK (43%), Netherlands (47%), Germany (40%), Italy (19%) and Norway (69%).

Conclusion The conversion rate from EAPC Care Congress Meeting presentation to peer-reviewed publication better than emergency medicine and rehabilitation medicine; and it was similar on other specialities. Oral presentations had better publication rate than poster presentations. The level of conversion from presentation at the EAPC to publication in peer reviewed journal highlights the conference's importance in promoting the palliative medicine research.