AAOS Annual Meeting Roundup

Abstract

The Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons (AAOS) continues to be one of the largest meetings focused on the practice and science of orthopaedic and trauma surgery. It is characterised by a robust international attendance, with an academic program delivered by true leaders and innovators in the field. This year, the AAOS Annual Meeting was held from March 11 to 15 in New Orleans, Louisiana. The educational program offered a combination of a large collection of instructional course lectures, symposia, and scientific exhibits representing a wide range of orthopaedic subspecialties. This year, the Central Program Committee received a record number of original scientific abstracts and from a field of 5,646 abstracts submitted, a total of 825 abstracts were selected for podium presentations, and 569 abstracts were selected for poster presentations. Each subspecialty committee determined the best papers and posters presented in their respective subspecialty sections. These papers and posters were presented in a symposium moderated by Steven Frick, MD a-nd William Mihalko, MD, entitled “Best of the AAOS.” This session really represents a cross section of the finest orthopaedic research from the past year and each of these representative papers and posters deserves discussion. Five papers were selected from the program in adult hip reconstruction covering topics as varied as quality improvement programmes to bearing surfaces. An innovative use of the database of the American College of Surgeons National Surgical Quality Improvement Program (NSQIP) was used by Meddenick et al to identify risk factors for readmission following primary total hip replacement (THR).1 During the study period 9441 THR procedures were performed, and 345 unplanned re-admissions occurred giving an overall readmission rate of 3.65%. A number of independent predictive risk factors for re-admission were identified, including: low serum albumin, chronic steroid use, increased number of medical comorbidities, …