The 1st Congress of the European Academy of Neurology, held in Berlin, June 20-23, 2015, was attended by a total of 6391 participants. About 2500 (39,11%) attendees filled in the survey to receive their certificate of attendance (in Istanbul 24% of the participants filled out the survey).
Ten participants out of those who completed the survey, won the congress lottery and will receive an EAN package (TC manuscript CD-Rom, T-Shirt and other EAN goodies). The winners are as follows:
– Sami Abdul-Malak
– Ioan Buraga
– Matthias Küchler
– Elisabeth Fertl
– José Vale
– Miro Denislic
– Ali Abushammala
– Daniel Alejandro Alvarez
– Gesche Exner
– Orsolya Györfi
These are the most remarkable congress statistics:
The top ten countries from which all the congress participants originated from were:
1. Germany (899)
2. France (384)
3. Switzerland (375)
4. United Kingdom (345)
5. Italy (332)
6. Spain (215)
7. Greece (210)
8. The Netherlands (205)
9. Russian Federation (200)
10. Romania (176)
From the survey the results are as follows:
Companies sponsored 52.91% of the congress participants. The majority of the survey participants were not a member of the EAN (67.37%).
There were slightly more male (54.39%) than female (45.61%) participants.
Most of them were between 31 and 60 years old. (31-40 – 24.84%, 41-50 – 30.09% and 51-60 – 21.25%) years old.
The majority of the survey participants were neurologists (85.88%).
The top reasons to attend the 1st EAN congress were:
• The Scientific Programme (402, 16.08%)
• Location of the congress (215, 8.6%)
• Networking with fellow colleagues (62, 2.48%)
• It was the first EAN congress/a historic event (58, 2.32%)
• The EAN congress is the most important neurology meeting in Europe (42, 1.68%)
• Quality of the congress and its speakers (39, 1.56%)
• Invitation to present (34, 1.36%)
The sessions with the most attendance were Symposia (86.12%), the Poster Sessions (74.4%), the Oral Sessions (73.01%) and the Satellite Symposia (66.95%).
The majority of the participants (70,54%) found the standard of the presentations to be satisfactory or very satisfactory.
1966 Abstracts have been submitted to the Berlin congress. Out of these, the Programme Committee rejected 11.5%. In the end, only 2.3% of the 1546 posters scheduled were not presented at the congress.
The quality of poster presentations was found satisfactory by 31.09%, very satisfactory by 25.04% and fair by 16.15%. However, advancing technical aspects, reducing disturbing factors (i.e. noise) and appointing every presentation with a chairperson have been requested.
61.13% found it easy to come in contact with delegates from other countries and a little over 25% found that the networking events were very satisfactory. However, it was requested by 1% of the survey participants to have a better social programme and more networking events – for 73.51% the informal talk with colleagues is a very rewarding aspect of the congress.
When asked about their general feedback of the congress, many of the participants pointed out that they were very pleased with the quality of the congress (244). Unfortunately, some people mentioned they thought the food quality was insufficient and should be more diverse and healthy (24).
When asked what the participants wished for regarding the future EAN congresses, a lot of them (209) had ideas for the scientific programme (i.e. topics suggestions). Also, it was proposed to have more Interactive sessions (38) and more Teaching courses (29). A couple of participants also wished for a higher quality (12) in lectures and better/new speakers (15).
The TC evaluation report will be published in the next issue of Neuropenews.
Altogether, the 1st EAN congress was a great success. We, EAN Head Office together with Congrex Switzerland, are currently preparing the 2nd EAN congress in Copenhagen 2016 as well as the 3rd congress in Amsterdam 2017 and will of course try to incorporate all the improvement suggestions received.
If you, too, wish to send input regarding the congress, please send a message to headoffice@eaneurology.org or leave a comment below.
