Arthoscopic Knee Surgery Fails the Test

Here is an item on knee surgery from the Wall Street Journal Health Blog. It was also mentioned on NPR today.

Duncan


September 11, 2008, 8:29 am
Knee Surgery No Help for Arthritis
Posted by Jacob Goldstein

Surgeons take it as an article of faith that a chance to cut is a chance to cure. So it's a pretty big deal when a study clearly shows that a common surgery doesn't actually help certain patients. Even more so if the study is confirming similar results from a previous study.

That's what happened this week, when the New England Journal of Medicine published a study that showed arthroscopic surgery doesn't provide any benefit for moderate to severe arthritis of the knee.

Researchers randomly assigned nearly 200 patients to receive either surgery, drugs and physical therapy, or drugs and physical therapy alone. Three months later, patients who had surgery had slightly less pain than those who did not. But there was no significant difference between the two groups at six months, one year or two years. The difference at two years was the main measure the researchers looked at.

A 2002 study had similar results.



http://snipurl.com/3pdn9