Sandbox

Sham knee surgery study

Common knee surgery does very little for some, study suggests
by Pam Belluck, New York Times, 25 December 2013

The article concerns an arthroscopic procedure on the knee to repair a torn meniscus. According to the article, about 700,000 such surgeries are performed annually, the most for any orthopedic procedure. But is the procedure actually beneficial? The study described here was conducted in Finland; it involved 146 patients, aged 35 to 55, at five hospitals. All of the subjects were underwent arthroscopic procedures, which involve making and incision and inserting a scope to assess the injury. However, at this point, it was randomly determined whether the meniscus would actually be trimmed or if a false blade would be rubbed simply rubbed on the knee cap as a sham treatment.

The following quotation comes from a related story in the Wall Street Journal:

"Doctors have a bad tendency to confuse what they believe with what they know," said Dr. Järvinen [one of the study's authors], an orthopedic resident and adjunct professor at Helsinki University Central Hospital.

The WSJ article also included the following graphic

Submitted by Paul Alper