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Exercise therapy versus arthroscopic partial meniscectomy for degenerative meniscal tear in middle aged patients: randomised controlled trial with two year follow-up

PainSci » bibliography » Kise et al 2016
updated
Tags: knee, surgery, biomechanics, arthritis, harms, bad news, leg, limbs, pain problems, treatment, etiology, pro, aging

Three articles on PainSci cite Kise 2016: 1. The Complete Guide to Patellofemoral Pain Syndrome2. Your Back Is Not Out of Alignment3. Knee Debridement is a Completely Ineffective Procedure

PainSci commentary on Kise 2016: ?This page is one of thousands in the PainScience.com bibliography. It is not a general article: it is focused on a single scientific paper, and it may provide only just enough context for the summary to make sense. Links to other papers and more general information are provided wherever possible.

This large trial compared exercise to surgical cleanup of the menisci and found “no clinically relevant difference was found between the two groups … at two years.” They didn’t include patients with locked knees, trauma, and most had no osteoarthritis.

~ Paul Ingraham

original abstract Abstracts here may not perfectly match originals, for a variety of technical and practical reasons. Some abstacts are truncated for my purposes here, if they are particularly long-winded and unhelpful. I occasionally add clarifying notes. And I make some minor corrections.

OBJECTIVE: To determine if exercise therapy is superior to arthroscopic partial meniscectomy for knee function in middle aged patients with degenerative meniscal tears.

DESIGN: Randomised controlled superiority trial.

SETTING: Orthopaedic departments at two public hospitals and two physiotherapy clinics in Norway.

PARTICIPANTS: 140 adults, mean age 49.5 years (range 35.7-59.9), with degenerative medial meniscal tear verified by magnetic resonance imaging. 96% had no definitive radiographic evidence of osteoarthritis.

INTERVENTIONS: 12 week supervised exercise therapy alone or arthroscopic partial meniscectomy alone.

MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Intention to treat analysis of between group difference in change in knee injury and osteoarthritis outcome score (KOOS4), defined a priori as the mean score for four of five KOOS subscale scores (pain, other symptoms, function in sport and recreation, and knee related quality of life) from baseline to two year follow-up and change in thigh muscle strength from baseline to three months.

RESULTS: No clinically relevant difference was found between the two groups in change in KOOS4 at two years (0.9 points, 95% confidence interval -4.3 to 6.1; P=0.72). At three months, muscle strength had improved in the exercise group (P≤0.004). No serious adverse events occurred in either group during the two year follow-up. 19% of the participants allocated to exercise therapy crossed over to surgery during the two year follow-up, with no additional benefit.

CONCLUSION: The observed difference in treatment effect was minute after two years of follow-up, and the trial's inferential uncertainty was sufficiently small to exclude clinically relevant differences. Exercise therapy showed positive effects over surgery in improving thigh muscle strength, at least in the short term. Our results should encourage clinicians and middle aged patients with degenerative meniscal tear and no definitive radiographic evidence of osteoarthritis to consider supervised exercise therapy as a treatment option.Trial registration www.clinicaltrials.gov (NCT01002794).

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