Impact of COVID-19 pandemic on global contributions to the European heart failure congress: Do we need more diversity?

Dakhil, Z.

Background Highly impact international conferences play a critical role in advancing career, academic thrive and global networking. After COVID-19 era, virtual science contributes remarkably to increase networking and professional collaboration across the globe. Up to our knowledge there is no data regarding global contributions to cardiology conferences in general and how COVID-19 might impact the landscape of these contributions in particular, especially in the context of contributions from low- and middle-income countries (LIC and MIC). Purpose Current analysis aimed to determine the global diversity in abstracts presented at European Heart Failure congress according to the continent and world bank class of the country of the first author. Methods Cross sectional analysis of the European Heart Failure congress abstracts published in the (European Journal of Heart Failure) in 2019 and 2020 which represented the before and during COVID-19 era respectively. The analysis was done according to the continent and world economic classification of the first authors' country. Results Total n. of abstracts analysed were 2779 with 17.6% decline rate during pandemic contributions (1634 in 2019 vs 1145 in 2020). Europe followed by Asia had the highest total abstract contributions;1701 and 740 abstracts respectively. Europe contributions proportion increased during pandemic (60.52% in 2019 to 62.18% in 2020) while Asia contributions proportion declined during pandemic (28.33% in 2019 vs 24.19% in 2020), p=0.03, see figure 1. Russia had the highest number of contributions (11.68% in 2019 vs 12.22% in 2020), this is followed by Spain (7.34% in 2019 vs 11.35% in 2020) and Portugal (5.87% in 2019 vs 11.44% in 2020). A total of 1899 (68.33%) abstracts were from high-income countries (HIC) vs 880 (31.67%) from MIC and none from LIC in the sum of both years. Contributions from MIC increased during COVID-19 era from 30.23% in 2019 to 33.71% in 2020, while contributions from HIC declined from 69.76% in 2019 to 66.28% during COVID-19 era in 2020, p=0.052, see figure 1. Conclusions About third of contributions to European Heart Failure congress were from MIC and none from LIC, however, there is modest increase of contributions from MIC during COVID-19 era which can be explained by more presentations from these countries due to feasible virtual meetings and waiving of conference fees in 2020 (HFA Discoveries Platform). Further networking and collaborations with researchers from these countries should be encouraged especially with the high cardiovascular disease burden in these countries which necessitated sharing their perspectives and experiences to decrease cardiovascular disease burden worldwide especially by using the hybrid approach and virtual science. Increasing research, travel and educational grants (especially for researchers from LIC) along with calling for action to remove other barriers like VISA issues can help to bridge the conference equity gap and achieve solidarity in science.