The Most Impactful Articles on the Management and Outcomes of Acetabular Bone Loss: An Altmetric Analysis

Purpose: To identify the top articles pertaining to acetabular bone loss and understand the impact that social media platforms have on the dissemination of hip research.Methods: In May 2023, the Altmetric database was searched using the PubMed MeSH terms "acetabular bone loss".Studies with the highest Altmetric Attention Scores (AAS) were reviewed to exclude topics irrelevant to the treatment or clinical outcomes of acetabular bone loss.Only the top articles that satisfied the inclusion criteria and had an AAS >1 were included in the final analysis.Bibliometric factors for each study were gathered to analyze article characteristics, following the methodology of previous studies. Results:The query yielded 281 studies that had mentions.Following the application of our inclusion criteria, the top 45 articles were identified with a mean AAS of 13.56 62.33 (range: 1-421) and a citation rate of 59.4 141 (range: 0-921).The included articles represented 17 journals, with 25 articles attributed to three journals: The Journal of Arthroplasty (JOA; 24.4%), Clinical Orthopedics & Related Research (CORR; 15.6%), and The Bone & Joint Journal (BJJ; 15.6%).More than half of all articles originated from North America (n = 24; 53.3%) followed by Europe (n = 15; 33.3%).A total of 40 of the 45 articles were Level 4 (n = 30; 66.7%) or 5 (n = 10; 22%) evidence.Twitter was the most utilized platform to share acetabular bone loss research (n = 33; 73.3%).There was a statistically significant increase in AAS for every incremental increase in journal impact factor (IF) (P = 0.030) and continent of origin in North America (p = 0.042), but no association between score and citation rate (p > 0.05).Conclusion: Top articles on acetabular bone loss mostly comprise of studies with low levels of evidence performed in North America or Europe with a high citation rate.Twitter was the most utilized social media platform to share acetabular bone loss research.Higher journal IF and article origin in North America were associated with a higher AAS, but no correlation was found between AAS and citation rate.