Sources and quality of literature addressing femoroacetabular impingement: a scoping review 2011–2015

A systematic review was performed to explore the current trends over the last 5 years in femoroacetabular impingement (FAI) literature and compare the quality and sources of publications in the literature to that published previously. We identified 1066 relevant studies including 186,572 patients. The number of publications increased during the reviewed time period with the most dramatic increase from 2011 to 2013. Seventy-three percent (N = 786) of all studies were of levels 4 and 5 quality evidence. The percent of publications which were levels 1, 2 and 3 increased by almost twofold from 16.1 % (N = 26) to 28.7 % (N = 51) between 2011 and 2015. In comparison to previous work, there has been 3.5-fold increase in the number of publications over the past 5 years with a shift towards improving the level of evidence available guiding the arthroscopic management of FAI.

Level of evidence: IV—Systematic Review