The Most Influential Publications in Outpatient Total Joint Arthroplasty

Background Total joint replacements are some of the most common procedures performed by surgeons. There has been a recent increase to transition these procedures to the outpatient setting. Objective Our study seeks to identify the most influential publications, in terms of total citations, regarding outpatient total hip and knee replacement surgeries. Methods The database used to collect the data for this analysis was Clarivate Analytics Web of Science. The search query selected and used to collect data was: "outpatient or ambulatory," with a "Title" filter AND "total joint replacement" AND "total joint arthroplast*" with "Topic" filters. The papers returned were then sorted by total number of citations and exported to Google Sheets for further analysis. Results The most cited publication was "Outpatient total knee arthroplasty with a minimally invasive technique," by Berger et al.. This was the oldest publication analyzed (2005), the most recent publication being published in 2020. The publications analyzed were cited a total number of 1,774 times and averaged 35.5 citations per year. The Journal with the most attributable publications was The Journal of Arthroplasty. Conclusion This study provides a measure of the most cited articles on outpatient arthroplasty. Most literature on the topic were categorized as Clinical Science and Outcomes (50%), comprised level of evidence III (28%), were published in the Journal of Arthroplasty (54%) and came out of the United States (76%). Knowledge of these most influential articles allows for a foundation of understanding on a rapidly growing area of arthroplasty among clinicians.