How important is the contribution of surgical specialties to a medical schools NIH funding?
OBJECTIVE: To determine the relative contribution and importance of five surgical specialties (general surgery, urology, otolaryngology, neurosurgery, and orthopedics) to the total National Institutes of Health (NIH) funding at medical schools. METHODS: Publicly available NIH funding data from 1996 to 2004 were analyzed. RESULTS: From 1998 through 2003 the NIH budget increased from 11.2 billion to 21.9 billion dollars. Overall, NIH funding to departments of medicine was the greatest contributor to any individual medical school’s total NIH funding, comprising 28.4% of total NIH awards on average, with a correlation coefficient highly predictive of medical school’s ranking for NIH awards (cc = 0.93). Total NIH funding by different surgical specialties varied greatly, both within and between institutions. Together all of the surgical subspecialties combined accounted for 4.8% of medical school NIH awards on average from the years 1996 to 2004. Among the surgical specialties, general surge
