Background:
Conflict of interest among physicians in the context of private industry funding led to the introduction of the Physician Payments Sunshine Act in 2010. This study examined whether private industry funding correlated with scholarly productivity in the respective subspecialties of plastic surgery as well as the wider academic plastic surgery community.
Methods
Full-time plastic surgeons and their academic attributes were identified via institutional websites. Fellowship trained individuals were segregated into subspecialties of microsurgery, craniofacial surgery, hand surgery and aesthetics and burn surgery. The Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services Open Payment database was used to extract industry funding. Each individual’s bibliometric data were then collected through Scopus to determine the correlation between selected surgeon characteristics, academic productivity, and industry funding.
Results
935 academic plastic surgeons were identified with 532 having defined subspecialty training. Industry funding amounts and bibliometrics among subspecialty surgeons were comparable among the 4 groups with aesthetics and burn surgeons and craniofacial surgeons displaying a preponderance of attaining more funding (p=0.053) and career publications respectively without reaching statistical significance (p=0.063). Overall, research-specific funding (p=0.014) and higher funding amounts (p<0.0001) correlated with higher h-indices in tandem with higher academic rank. A funding level of $2,000 appeared to be the approximate cutoff above which scholastic productivity became apparent.
Conclusions
Our study demonstrated in detail the intimate association between greater industry funding and higher academic bibliometrics in academic plastic surgery fellows of every subspecialty. Even at modest amounts, industry support, especially when research-designated, positively influenced research and therefore academic output.