Level of Clinical Evidence Presented at the Arthroscopy Association of North America Annual Meeting Over 10 Years (2006-2015)

Abstract

Purpose: To evaluate any trends in the level of clinical evidence in the papers presented at the Arthroscopy Association of North America (AANA) annual scientific meetings from 2006 to 2015.

Methods: The online abstracts of the paper presentations presented at the AANA meetings were independently evaluated by 2 reviewers (664 total presentations). The reviewers independently screened these results for clinical studies and graded their level of evidence from Level I (i.e., randomized trials) to IV (i.e., case series) based on the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons classification system.

Results: Five hundred thirteen presentations met the inclusion criteria and were evaluated. Overall, 16% of the presentations were Level I evidence, 15% were Level II, 26% were Level III, and 43% were Level IV. We observed a significant non-random improvement in the level of evidence of presentations at the AANA meetings (P ≤ .001) between 2006 and 2015. In particular, the percentage of papers with Level IV evidence presented significantly decreased (P ≤ .001) and the percentage of papers with Level III evidence increased (P = .004) over the study period.

Conclusions: Statistical trends show that the influence of evidence-based medicine in orthopaedics has had a positive impact on the quality of research presented at the AANA meetings.

Level of evidence: Level IV, review of abstracts of Level I to Level IV evidence.