The Z or “scarf” osteotomy was first described by Meyer in 1926 and then by Burutaran in 1976. It was later popularised by Weil in the USA and Barouk in Europe in the 1990's and is now an accepted technique that forms part of a surgeons' armamentarium. The theory of Diffusion of Innovations was described by Rogers in 1962 to explain how novel ideas are accepted into practice across different industries, including medicine. It has never previously been used to study the adoption of ideas in foot and ankle surgery. This paper uses publication volume as a surrogate marker for adoption, as described previously by the authors. Briefly, a systematic review of the literature was carried out. MESH headings included ‘Hallux Valgus’, and ‘osteotomy’ or ‘SCARF’ or ‘Z osteotomy’ or ‘bunionectomy’. 2818 publications were identified and the abstracts were reviewed excluding 2699 publications for non-relevance. The data was analysed by year of publication, country of origin, as well as for level of evidence.Introduction
Methods
