Finnish research to revolutionise indications for knee surgery (New England Journal of Medicine on 25 December 2013)
The Finnish Degenerative Meniscal Lesion Study (FIDELITY) compared surgical treatment of degenerative meniscal tears to placebo surgery. A year after the procedure the study participants, both those in the group who underwent surgery and the ones in the placebo group, had an equally low incidence of symptoms and were satisfied with the overall situation of their knee.
"These results show that surgery is not an effective form of treatment in such cases. It's difficult to imagine that such a clear result would result in no changes to treatment practices," state adjunct professor Teppo Järvinen from the University of Helsinki and the Helsinki University Central Hospital, and Raine Sihvonen, a specialist in orthopaedics and traumatology from Hatanpää Hospital in Tampere.
Knee problems – ones associated both with trauma and with aging – are highly common and place a significant burden on the health care system. The most common diagnosis of the knee that requires treatment is a tear in the meniscus, for which the established form of treatment is the partial removal of the ...
