All Michael E. DeBakey Surgical Society members—including alumni of the Department of Surgery training programs and current and past faculty members in the Department of Surgery—are eligible to participate. Non-BCM residents, fellows, and students are also eligible to submit their work provided the senior author/mentor is a departmental alumnus or current or past faculty member. Abstracts should describe completed work and can describe work that has been previously presented at scientific meetings or published in the literature.

The top scoring abstracts will be selected for presentation. Acceptances will be sent during the week of January 16, 2023, via email. The acceptance email will provide instructions for preparing the presentation.

Abstracts will be scored based on the following five criteria:

• Significance and innovation – Does the abstract address an important problem or question? Is the study objective or hypothesis clearly stated?
• Study design and methods – Are the methods appropriate and clearly described?
• Results and analysis – Do the results address the scientific question or hypothesis? Do the results reflect an appropriate analysis? Are quantitative data reported whenever possible?
• Conclusions – Are the conclusions justified by the data? Do the conclusions relate specifically to the stated objective or hypothesis?
• Clarity – Is the overall abstract clearly written and easy to understand? If used, is the table or figure clear and informative?

Please submit an abstract highlighting your recent clinical, health services, educational, biomedical innovation, or basic science research. Abstracts should describe completed work and can describe work that has been previously presented at scientific meetings or published in the literature. Each abstract is limited to 2000 characters (including spaces); titles and authors are excluded from this count. All abstracts must be submitted via the online submission system by 6:00 pm on Monday, December 12, 2022. A notice will be distributed when the submission website is open.

• Title
• Authors – List all authors contributing to the work. The presenting author must be listed first.
• Background – Describe why the study was conducted and state the objective and/or hypothesis.
• Methods – Describe how the study was conducted, focusing on study design, experimental techniques, and analytic approach.
• Results – Describe the most important findings of the study. Quantitative results should be reported whenever possible. Abstracts can include one figure or one table.
• Conclusions – Describe the conclusions reached based specifically on the study results and comment on the relevance of the study.
• Tables and Figures: Tables and figures are permitted. If included, they will need to be uploaded as a single PDF document.
• Tip: Avoid symbol fonts such as α, β, γ in your abstract; instead spell them out as in: alpha, beta, gamma.