Surgical research in the north and northeast of Brazil 1

PURPOSE: To evaluate the scientific production from the surgical areas from the State University of Para (UEPA), Federal Universities of Para (UFPA) and of Paraiba (UFPB), Brazil. METHODS: The scientific productions of professors in the last five years were classified according to the Qualis system of CAPESMedicine III (http://qualis.capes.gov.br/webqualis/publico/pesquisaPublicaClassificacao.seam?conversationPropagation=begin) and it was computed the number of guidance of students scientific projects. RESULTS: Seventy-four professors were included, 31 with Master and 43 with PhD degrees. UFPA presented more publications (49% out of the total), which 32% of them in Journals B1 or higher. Otorhinolaryngology presented the greatest number of publications (29% out of the total); however, 98% of them in B3 or lower. Gastroenterological Surgery, which is responsible for 23% out of the total, had 57% of its publications in B1 or higher. The most frequent type of guidance was the one about scientific work of completion of undergraduate course (63%). Gynecology and Obstetrics presented the greatest number of student’s guidance (35% out of the total) and Gastroenterological Surgery the largest number of Master’s degree and PhD degree supervisions. CONCLUSIONS: The specialties Gynecology and Obstetrics and Gastroenterological Surgery from the State University of Para (UEPA), Federal Universities of Para (UFPA) and of Paraiba (UFPB) presented the greatest number of professors with academic degrees. Gastroenterological Surgery presented the largest scientific productions at higher strata of WebQualis CAPES classification and also the largest number of Master and PhD directed.


Introduction
Medical education in Brazil began with the creation of the Medical Surgery Course of Bahia in 1808, which evolved to the current Federal University of Bahia (UFBA) 1 .In spite of the geographic proximity, only after 111 years the North Region was inserted in the scenario of the national medical teaching, with the creation of the School of Medicine and Surgery of Para in 1919, subsequently integrated to the Federal University of Para (UFPA) 2 .
In Paraiba, the School of Medicine, Odontology and Pharmacy was created in 1950, and, in 1955, it was integrated to the Federal University of Paraiba (UFPB).Higher education teaching in Brazil evolved and, since the university reform, Brazil has gained space in the worldwide scientific production 3 .In the last years, the quantity of published scientific articles in indexed journals increased less than 9% in the world, while Brazil had an increase of approximately 54% in its publication number 4 .
In Medicine and specifically in the surgical field, the State of Sao Paulo was a pioneer in the creation of graduate programs (Master and PhD) in the surgical area 5 .However, after roughly The "surgical area" was defined by the surgical specialties that compose the area Medicine III of CAPES and the nomenclature adopted in the table CAPES' areas of scientific knowledge (available in http://capes.gov.br/avaliacao/tabela-de-areas-deconhecimento).Subspecialties which are not in the table, such as Oncology Surgery and General Surgery, were grouped in the term "Surgery" that is in the table.
A research was conducted in the Lattes platform of CNPq (http://buscatextual.cnpq.br/buscatextual/busca. do?metodo=apresentar) in order to obtain the curriculum of every professor who had Master's and PhD degrees and the ones who had their Lattes curriculum updated less than three years ago were included in the study.Professors without Academic degree and those ones who do not have their Lattes curriculum updated were excluded.
The production of professors in the last five years   Inc., Chicago, USA) and the level of rejection of the null hypothesis was set in 5% .

Results
The Medicine programs of UEPA, UFPA and UFPB have, respectively, 63, 62, 64 professors in the surgical area.Among them, the ones with Master and PhD degrees are, respectively, 36 (57%), 38 (61%) and 24 (38%).The inclusion and exclusion of those professors in the present study and their distribution through the surgical specialties are presented in the Tables 2 and 3.It was noticed that the largest number of publications and the greatest concentration at higher levels (Qualis B1 or higher) were among the ones with PhD degrees but without a statistical relevance (ρ=0.074).It was also ascertained a more numerous scientific production in UFPA (49% of the total of publications) and more concentrated at higher levels of Qualis classification scale.
The specialty with the largest number of publications was Otorhinolaryngology (29% of the total of publications); however, 98% of those publications were in journals classified at Qualis B3 or lower.Gastroenterological Surgery in turn, responsible for 23% of the total of publications, had 57% of its publications classified at Qualis B1 or higher (Table 6).The most frequent type of guidance was the one about scientific work of completion of undergraduate course (SWCUC) (63%) (Table 7).Gynecology and Obstetrics presented the greatest number of guidance of undergraduate and graduate students (35% of the total), including the supervision of scientific work of completion of undergraduate course, corresponding to 41% of this specialty.
Gastroenterological Surgery in turn presented the largest number of Master and PhD guidance (Table 8).
50 years, actions to reduce the asymmetries of North, Northeast and Central-West are still necessary, particularly about graduate programs in several axes, such as: area of expertise, quality, quantity and distribution of concepts of the programs established by the evaluation of the Coordination of Improvement for Higher Academic Staff (CAPES) 6 .There are papers that report a high concentration of Schools of Medicine in the State of Sao Paulo compared to the national set 7 .The asymmetries are also reported as in the certification scope of the faculty as in the scientific production scope, among the various Brazilian institutions 8 .Despite the relevance of the topic, there is a shortage of studies and surveys about the certification and production of professors in the surgical field in Brazil has motivated the present study regarding academic degree and scientific production of professors in the surgical areas in the Federal and State University of Para and Federal University of Paraiba.The purpose is to investigate the academic reality of some public universities in the North and Northeast in Brazil.Methods A listing containing the professors from the surgical area (defined by the specialties that compose the area Medicine III of CAPES from three public universities (State University of Para -UEPA, Federal University of Para -UFPA, Federal University of Paraiba -UFPB) and their respective academic degree obtained.
Medicine III Area indexed in other databases B5 Journals outside the Medicine III Area indexed in other databases It was also evaluated the number of guidance of undegraduate and graduate students.The professors were stratified by their specialty and the obtained data were subjected to a statistical analysis.The absolute and relative frequencies of the studied variables were presented.The Chi-square test was used to compare the three universities about the number of professors with Master's degrees and PhD degree included.The Kolmogorov-Smirnov test was used to compare the production of professors with Master's degrees and PhD degree regarding the quality of the scientific production in the period from 2008 to 2012 in the different levels of Qualis classification scale of CAPES.It was used the SPSS program (Statistical Package for Social Sciences,

TABLE 2 -
Frequency of Professors of the State and Federal Universities of Para and Federal University of Paraiba versus Academic degree (Master or PhD) (Chi-square test).

TABLE 3 -
Absolute and relative frequency of professor with Masters and PhD per specialty.

TABLE 4 -
Distribution of scientific production of the universities, in the period 2008-2012, according WebQualis CAPES.

Table 5
shows a comparison between the productions of professors with a Master and PhD degree.

TABLE 5 -
Comparison between professors with Master and PhD degrees of the three universities, in the period 2008-2012 (Kolmogorov-Smirnov test).

TABLE 6 -
Distribution of scientific production of the three universities, in the period 2008-2012, according WebQualis CAPES Medicine III per specialty.

TABLE 7 -
Frequency of the type of guidance.

TABLE 8 -
Distribution of student's guidance, per specialty.