SHAM SURGERY AS GOOD AS PARTIAL MENISCECTOMY (Orthopedics This Week)
Sham surgery is just as effective as an arthroscopic partial meniscectomy in diminishing knee pain.
That’s the result of a trial from the University of Helsinki, Finland involving 146 patients reported in the December 16, 2013 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM). None of the patients had knee osteoarthritis but had symptoms of a degenerative medial meniscus tear. The outcomes after arthroscopic partial meniscectomy were no better than those after a sham surgical procedure.
The experiment involved volunteers whose knee pain appeared to be caused by wear and tear of the meniscus. After 12 months, the average improvement among the people who received real surgery and those who got the sham surgery was essentially the same, reported the research team, and led by Teppo Jarvinen, M.D., Ph.D.
There was no significant improvement in knee pain after exercise and no sizable improvement in the likelihood that a patient would require subsequent knee surgery.
However, according to Craig Bennett, M.D., chief of sports medicine at the University of Maryland Medical Center, the findings should not be over-generali...
