Presidential Greeting - American Society for Laser Medicine and ...

2011 Annual Conference
Pre-Conference Courses: March 30-31, 2011
Annual Conference: April 1-3, 2011
Gaylord Texan TM Resort and Convention Center
Grapevine, TX
General Conference Information
DISCLOSURE OF FACULTY'S AND SPEAKER'S COMMERCIAL RELATIONSHIP(S)
Consistent with the ASLMS policy, faculty and speakers for the conference are expected to disclose to you at the
beginning of their presentation, any economic or other personal interests that create, or it may be perceived as
creating, a conflict related to the material discussed. This policy is intended to make you aware of faculty's and
speaker's interests, so you may form your own judgments about such material. Disclosure of faculty's and speaker's
relationship(s) is indicated in the conference program. Please be advised that FDA approval is specific in regard to
approved uses and labeling of drugs and devices. The presenter must disclose whether or not the device/treatment
is approved by the FDA or if it is considered to be investigational, and must fully disclose any off-label use of
devices, drugs or other materials that constitute the subject of the presentation. In order to meet the guidelines
established by the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education, the ASLMS Committee on Continuing
Education has endorsed the policy that disclosure of all proprietary interests or other potential conflicts of interest
must be provided to conference registrants of all speakers and spouses who have relationships with industry.
GUIDELINES FOR REVIEW AND SELECTION OF ABSTRACTS
The Program Chairperson performs an initial review of all abstract submissions. The Program Chairperson may at
his/her discretion, re-categorize the abstracts. Abstracts are then submitted to the individual Section Chairpersons
who review, rank, and select abstracts for presentation at the Annual Conference. Given the brevity of the
abstracts, the Program and Section Chairpersons realize that the detail level obtained through this process cannot
achieve the level of a full article in a peer-reviewed journal. However, the spirit of this Annual Conference is that
full disclosure (in so far as conflicts of interest as well as details in methodology) will be expected at the time of
presentation. Abstracts that cannot meet this criterion due to intellectual property concerns or withhold vital
methodology specifics do not meet the criteria for acceptance and do not represent the spirit and intent of the
Annual Conference should not be submitted.
The Section Chairpersons also take into consideration the following criteria when reviewing abstracts:
• Abstracts must not have been published or presented previously (clinical series updates are an exception).
• All scientific research referred to, reported on, or used in the abstract must conform to the generally
accepted standards of experimental design, data collection, and analysis.
• Selection priority will be given to those abstracts that report already collected data. Abstracts should contain
tangible factual information and should accurately reflect work that has actually been performed.
Statements such as "results will be discussed' should be avoided.
• Recommendations in the abstract involving clinical medicine must be based on evidence that is accepted
within the profession of medicine as adequate justification for their indications and contraindications in the
care of patients.
• The abstract must not present recommendations, treatment, or manners of practicing medicine that are not
within the definitions as noted above, are known to have risks or dangers that outweigh the benefits, or are
known to be ineffective in the treatment of patients.
• The number of patients in the study will be taken into consideration. Scientific, well-designed studies are
given preference over anecdotal findings or single experiment or case.
• High quality abstracts with no bias toward a specific company(ies).
• Each author of an abstract submitted to ASLMS must have made a significant contribution to the research and
must assume responsibility for the content of the abstract.
• The number of abstracts submitted by an individual and/or institution will be taken into consideration. In
order to provide diversity of input, we discourage any one author making more than two presentations in a
session. The other submissions could be submitted for the poster session.
• The purpose of our conference is to disseminate accurate, balanced and objective information regarding
lasers and other optical sources in medicine and surgery. This purpose is best served by including
presentations that are varied in terms of topics and presenters.
• Abstracts should feature category-specific data with the expectation of full disclosure regarding methods and
materials.
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