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We read the article by de Virgilio et al¹ with great interest. The authors concluded, after prospectively evaluating an educational intervention for a short period, that weekly reading assignments combined with weekly preparatory examinations significantly improved mean overall American Board of Surgery In-Training Examination (ABSITE) scores. The improved results are thought to be secondary to the educational intervention, even though the actual scores on the closed-book multiple-choice examinations did not correlate with the ABSITE scores. What is also interesting is that the scores on the muliple-choice examinations were not included in the overall resident evaluation process and that the exact amount of reading performed by each resident was not quantified. The ideal educational intervention is still debatable. Conference attendance² does not significantly affect ABSITE performance, and results seem to be proportional to reading effort.³ This cannot be reliably tracked, and the same question persists throughout an individual's lifetime of education: . . . [Full Text of this Article]

Rabih A. Chaer, MD; Jose R. Cintron, MD

Correspondence: Dr Chaer, Department of Surgery, New York Weill Cornell Medical Center, 525 E 68th St, New York, NY 10021 (rchaer@hotmail.com).

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Improved Performance on the American Board of Surgery In-Training Examination: A Personal or Collective Effort?—Reply
Christian de Virgilio
Arch Surg. 2004;139(9):1026.
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