Surgeons Fail to Disclose Corporate Payments

Oct. 10, 2009— -- Orthopedic surgeons who received payments from device makers often failed to follow disclosure policies required by their chief professional society, researchers said.

Nearly 30 percent payments to surgeons serving as board and committee members of the American Academy of Orthopedic Surgeons (AAOS), and to presenters at its 2008 annual meeting, went unreported, according to Dr. Kanu Okike, of Harvard University.

The AAOS written policy requires disclosure of all payments -- including non-cash remuneration such as travel, gifts, entertainment, and meals -- from companies selling products related directly or indirectly to presentation topics.

Yet, some 20 percent of payments directly related to presentation topics at the 2008 meeting went undisclosed, as did half of indirectly related and unrelated payments, Okike and colleagues found.

The researchers suggested that, in light of their findings, the current disclosure system based on physician self-reporting may soon be replaced by mandatory reporting by companies making such payments.

"Legislation requiring all drug and device manufacturers to publicly disclose payments to physicians is currently pending in the U.S. Congress and has been met with widespread support," Okike and colleagues wrote.

"On the basis of the results of our study, one might expect the adoption of such policies to allow the identification of conflicts of interest that were previously undisclosed."

The researchers compared disclosure statements printed in the AAOS 2008 meeting program with payment records in 2007 released by five manufacturers of knee and hip prostheses.

The manufacturers -- Biomet, DePuy, Smith and Nephew, Stryker, and Zimmer -- made the payment records public as part of a settlement with the Department of Justice, which was investigating an alleged payola scheme involving financial inducements to surgeons.

Okike and colleagues identified 344 payments in these records that were made to AAOS board or committee members or to researchers presenting at the group's 2008 meeting.