No abstract

BackgroundSocial media use among scholars and journals is growing and has augmented the academic impact of published articles in several areas of medicine. However, the influence of social media postings on academic citations of shoulder and elbow surgery publications is not known. In this study, we sought (1) to quantify the adoption of Twitter use for the dissemination of research publications by three prominent shoulder and elbow surgery journals and (2) to determine the correlation between Twitter mentions and academic citations in shoulder and elbow surgery publications. MethodologyA total of 396 original research articles from three shoulder and elbow surgery journals (Journal of Shoulder and Elbow Surgery (JSES), Shoulder & Elbow, and JSES International) published in 2018 were assessed 34 to 45 months after print publication. For each article, the total number of Twitter mentions were obtained using Altmetric Bookmarklet and grouped into those tweeted by authors, an official outlet, or a third party. Article citation data was obtained using the Google Scholar search engine. Pearson correlation was used to determine the association between the number of Twitter mentions and citation count. ResultsOf all articles, 51% (202/396) had at least one Twitter mention. Of all Twitter mentions, 12.7% (367/2,879) occurred within the first week of online publication dates, while 51.5% (1,482/2,879) occurred between online and print publication dates. Articles mentioned on Twitter had 1.3-fold more Google Scholar citations (17.7 ± 15.2) than articles with no Twitter mentions (14.0 ± 15.7) (p = 0.017). The number of Twitter mentions had a weakly positive correlation with academic citation count (r = 0.25; p < 0.001). No significant difference in academic citation rates was found between articles tweeted by authors or official outlets when compared to articles tweeted by a third party only (p = 0.97 and p = 0.34, respectively). ConclusionsApproximately half of shoulder and elbow surgery publications are shared on Twitter, with the majority of the activity occurring prior to their print publication date. The finding that tweeted articles have more academic citations within three years of release suggests that social media activity seems to amplify the academic impact of shoulder and elbow surgery publications.

No abstract

The purpose of this study was to evaluate orthpaedic surgery resident case volume and variability for adult and pediatric knee arthroscopy from 2016 to 2020. Methods: The Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education surgical case log data from 2016 to 2020 for graduating United States orthpaedic surgery residents were analyzed. The average number of total (adult and pediatric), adult, and pediatric knee arthroscopy cases were compared from 2016 to 2020. The 10th and 90th percentiles of case volumes for adult and pediatric knee arthroscopy procedures were compared from 2016 to 2020 to determine caseload variability. Results: There was an 18% increase in pediatric knee arthroscopy cases between 2016 and 2020 (average: 13.9 AE 10 to 16.4 AE 13; P < .005), a 5.4% decrease in adult knee arthroscopy cases (100 AE 45 to 94.6 AE 47; P < .027), and a 2.6% decrease in total knee arthroscopy (113.9 AE 47 to 111 AE 51; P ¼ .264) cases. There was an 11-fold difference in the number of pediatric knee arthroscopy cases performed between the 10th and 90th percentile of residents in 2020 (3 vs 33 cases, respectively), a 3.28-fold difference for adult knee arthroscopy (47 vs 154, respectively), and a 2.98-fold difference for total knee arthroscopy (59 vs 176, respectively). Conclusion: Pediatric knee arthroscopy comprises a small yet growing percentage of total knee arthroscopy case volume of graduating orthpaedic surgery residents. However, wide variability in resident exposure is present and likely masked by the abundance of adult cases performed each year.