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

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.