Evidence-Based Medicine: Boom or Bust in Orthopaedic Trauma?

The VANCO Trial Findings Are Generalizable to a North American Trauma Registry

OBJECTIVES

To estimate the generalizability of treatment effects observed in the VANCO trial to a broader population of patients with tibial plateau or pilon fractures.

METHODS

Design and Setting: Clinical trial data from 36 United States trauma centers and Trauma Quality Programs registry data from more than 875 Level I-III trauma centers in the United States and Canada.Patient Selection Criteria: Patients enrolled in the VANCO trial treated with intrawound vancomycin powder from January 2015 to June 2017 and 31,924 VANCO-eligible TQP patients admitted in 2019 with tibial plateau and pilon fractures.Outcome Measure and Comparisons: Deep surgical site infection and gram-positive deep surgical site infection estimated in the TQP sample weighed by the inverse probability of trial participation.

RESULTS

The 980 patients in the VANCO trial were highly representative of 31,924 TQP VANCO-eligible patients (Tipton generalizability index 0.96). It was estimated that intrawound vancomycin powder reduced the odds of deep surgical infection by odds ratio (OR) = 0.46 (95% confidence interval [CI] 0.25-0.86) and gram-positive deep surgical infection by OR = 0.39 (95% CI, 0.18-0.84) within the TQP sample of VANCO-eligible patients. For reference, the trial average treatment effects for deep surgical infection and gram-positive deep surgical infection were OR = 0.60 (95% CI, 0.37-0.98) and OR = 0.44 (95% CI, 0.23-0.80), respectively.

CONCLUSIONS

This generalizability analysis found that the inferences of the VANCO trial generalize and might even underestimate the effects of intrawound vancomycin powder when observed in a wider population of patients with tibial plateau and pilon fractures.

LEVEL OF EVIDENCE

Therapeutic Level III. See Instructions for Authors for a complete description of levels of evidence.

The Importance of Pragmatic Study Design to the Scholarly Influence of Surgical Hip Fracture Randomized Controlled Trials

BACKGROUND

Surgical randomized controlled trials (RCTs) have potential drawbacks, leading some to question their role in filling the information gap in orthopaedic surgery. Pragmatism in study design was introduced to increase the clinical applicability of study results. The purpose of this study was to examine how pragmatism affects the scholarly influence of surgical RCTs.

METHODS

A search for surgical hip fracture-related RCTs published between 1995 and 2015 was done. Journal impact factor, citation number, research question, significance and type of outcome, number of centers involved, and the Pragmatic-Explanatory Continuum Indicator Summary-2 level of pragmatism score were recorded for each study. Scholarly influence was estimated by a study's inclusion into orthopaedic literature or guidelines or through the study's average yearly citation rate.

RESULTS

One hundred sixty RCTs were included in the final analysis. A multivariate logistic regression identified large study sample size as the only predictor of an RCT being used in clinical guidance texts. Large sample size and multicenter RCTs were predictors of high yearly citation rates. The level of pragmatism in study design did not predict scholarly influence.

CONCLUSIONS

Pragmatic design is not independently associated with increased scholarly influence; however, large study sample size was the most important study characteristic affecting scholarly influence.