Have Levels of Evidence Improved the Quality of Orthopaedic Research?

Brian P. Cunningham · Samuel M. Harmsen · Chris Kweon · Jason Patterson · Robert Waldrop · Alex C. McLaren +1 more

61 citations0/0 files storedClinical Orthopaedics and Related Research

No readable copy stored yet — this record is metadata only.

No open-access location is known for this record yet.

Literature note Cite in a project Citation map

Meta-analysis and systematic reviews scientometrics and bibliometrics research Health Sciences Research and Education

Abstract

BACKGROUND: Since 2003 many orthopaedic journals have adopted grading systems for levels of evidence (LOE). It is unclear if the quality of orthopaedic literature has changed since LOE was introduced. QUESTIONS/PURPOSES: We asked three questions: (1) Have the overall number and proportion of Level I and II studies increased in the orthopaedic literature since the introduction of LOE? (2) Is a similar pattern seen in individual orthopaedic subspecialty journals? (3) What is the interobserver reliability of grading LOE? METHODS: We assigned LOE to therapeutic studies published in 2000, 2005, and 2010 in eight major orthopaedic subspecialty journals. Number and proportion of Level I and II publications were determined. Data were evaluated using log-linear models. Twenty-six reviewers (13 residents and 13 attendings) graded LOE of 20 blinded therapeutic articles from the Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery for 2009. Interobserver agreement relative to the Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery was assessed using a weighted kappa. RESULTS: The total number of Level I and II publications in subspecialty journals increased from 150 in 2000 to 239 in 2010. The proportion of high-quality publications increased with time (p < 0.001). All subspecialty journals other than the Journal of Pediatric Orthopaedics and the Journal of Orthopaedic Trauma showed a similar behavior. Average weighted kappa was 0.791 for residents and 0.842 for faculty (p = 0.209). CONCLUSIONS: The number and proportion of Level I and II publications have increased. LOE can be graded reliably with high interobserver agreement. The number and proportion of high-level studies should continue to increase.

Paper brief

Loading…

Cite this work

Citation unavailable for this work.

BibTeX RIS CSL-JSON

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Citations in this library

Citation map →

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 61 citations exist upstream.

References

2011Introducing levels of evidence to the journal 2005LEVEL OF EVIDENCE IN ORTHOPAEDIC JOURNALS 2009Publication Rates of Presentations at an Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons 1989Archie Cochrane in his own words 2009Levels of Evidence in Research Published in The Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery (American Volume) Over the Last Thirty Years 2004Interobserver Agreement in the Application of Levels of Evidence to Scientific Papers in the American Volume of The Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery 2006Levels of evidence in otolaryngology journals

Cited by

2014Levels of Evidence in the Clinical Sports Medicine Literature 2014Open access publishing: a study of current practices in orthopaedic research 2017Neurosurgical Randomized Controlled Trials—Distance Travelled 2014Recent Randomized Controlled Trials in Otolaryngology 2017Impact of academic collaboration and quality of clinical orthopaedic research conducted in low- and middle-income countries 2014An Analysis of References Used for the Orthopaedic In-Training Examination: What are Their Levels of Evidence and Journal Impact Factors?

Explore the map →

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.

Imported from OpenAlex (CC0) — nothing here is generated.