A. K. Narahari1, E. J. Charles1, J. H. Mehaffey1, R. B. Hawkins1, A. K. Sharma1, V. E. Laubach1, C. G. Tribble1, I. L. Kron1 1University Of Virginia,Division Of Thoracic And Cardiovascular Surgery, Department Of Surgery,Charlottesville, VA, USA
Introduction: Obtaining federal funding for scientific research is as competitive as ever. Lung transplant research has been dominated by surgeons ever since the first transplant in 1963 by Dr. James Hardy, but is that still the case? We hypothesized that even in this difficult era of funding, surgeon-scientists have remained among the most productive and impactful researchers in lung transplantation.
Methods: Grants awarded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) for the study of lung transplantation between 1985 and 2015 were identified by querying the NIH Research Portfolio Online Reporting Tool Expenditures and Results (RePORTER), an online database that combines NIH project databases, funding records, abstracts, full-text articles, and information from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. Five research areas were targeted: lung preservation, ischemia reperfusion, ex vivo lung perfusion, anti-rejection medication, and airway healing. Grants not related to lung transplantation were excluded following a secondary search for “lung transplant” in the description page of NIH RePORTER. Identified papers from each grant were assigned the impact factor (Journal of Citation Reports 2014) for the journal in which it was published. A grant impact metric was calculated for each grant by dividing the sum of impact factors for all associated manuscripts by the total funding for that grant [Σ(Impact factor of each paper in grant) / Funding of grant]. Univariate analysis of grant impact metrics was completed.
Results: One hundred and eight lung transplantation grants were identified, totaling approximately $300 million and resulting in 2,300 papers published in 421 different journals. Surgery departments received $102.5 million over a total of 27 grants, while Internal Medicine departments received $118.8 million over 42 grants. There was no significant difference in the median grant impact metric between Surgery and Internal Medicine departments (4.2 vs. 5.4 per $100,000, p=0.86; Table 1), or between Surgery and Physiology, basic science, or Medicine subspecialty departments (all p>0.05; Table 1). Surgery departments had a significantly higher median grant impact metric compared with private companies (4.2 vs. 0 per $100,000, p<0.0001; Table 1).
Conclusion: Surgeon-scientists in the field of lung transplantation have received fewer grants and less total funding compared to other researchers but have maintained an equally high level of productivity and impact. The dual-threat academic surgeon-scientist is an important asset to the research community and should continue to be supported by the NIH.
