Common knee surgery may do more harm than good: "I don't know how I would defend this procedure"
A study suggests that common arthroscopic knee surgeries for degenerative cartilage tears may be ineffective and potentially harmful. Evidence indicates that physical therapy is a better alternative, yet the procedure remains common in the U.S.
Why it matters
It challenges standard medical practices, potentially leading to changes in healthcare policy and patient treatment protocols.
Thousands of Americans who undergo a common knee surgery might be making their problems worse rather than better.Researchers who followed patients for 10 years after they received either the actual procedure, arthroscopic knee surgery to trim degenerative cartilage tears, or merely "sham surgery" — a skin incision — for knee pain, found that the surgery provided little or no benefit and was, in fact, associated with accelerated osteoarthritis and higher rates of reoperation. That generally meant a total knee replacement."I don't know how I would defend this procedure at all," said one of the study's authors, Teppo Järvinen, an orthopedist and head of the Finnish Centre for Evidence-Based Orthopaedics. "What has been shown dramatically is that patients who have this procedure have more pain — they do worse.
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