Conflict of Interest Disclosure in American Arthroplasty Surgical Literature

Background

Relationships between industry and physicians are critical for innovation in the field of arthroplasty surgery. However, these relationships can present a conflict of interest (COI) for medical research and are required to be disclosed by most journals. The rate of accurate disclosures by physicians has not been studied in arthroplasty surgery.

Methods

The names of all authors publishing in The Journal of Arthroplasty and Arthroplasty Today between 2014 and 2018 were obtained from MEDLINE. Financial disclosure statements were obtained from the journal websites and manually compared against Open Payments. Statistical comparisons were made using chi-square testing with significance defined as P < .05.

Results

From 2014-2018, 3147 articles were published with 4038 authors meeting inclusion criteria. Of authors with financial disclosures, 2298 (57%) authors correctly disclosed. The total value of disclosed COI equaled $1.71 billion. The total value of undisclosed conflicts of interest equaled $334 million. For payments >$1,000,000 physicians disclosed accurately 86% of the time. For payments between $100 and $9999 physicians accurately disclosed 26% of the time. Senior authors disclosed correctly 72% of the time, which was significantly higher compared to middle and first authors.

Conclusions

There is a high prevalence of inaccurate disclosures in the field of arthroplasty surgery. This suggests a need to further educate early-career physicians on what constitutes a COI. Standardization of disclosure forms and verifications with the Open Payments Database can help increase the rate of accurate disclosures.