If you decide to quote a famous writer in your article, make sure the context is preferably fundamental. Sherman and Albersheim quote Mark Twain in their opinion piece.
Age is an issue of mind over matter. If you don’t mind, it doesn’t matter.
Their punchline is a criticism towards a dogma, saying, “‘older’ patients with degenerative tears should be treated non-operatively or offered meniscectomy when they fail conservative treatment.” Sure, this dogma can be criticized, especially if “old” has a fixed age limit of 40 years, for example.
We orthopaedic surgeons are desperate to find justifications for surgery, not to avoid it. In this case, I believe that Sherman and Albersheim are prone to justify more meniscus repair operations in older patients, as meniscectomy is known to be equal to placebo. What bothers me the most in this opinion piece is the golden orthopaedic justification for any useless surgery: “In appropriately selected patients, meniscus repair can deliver improved subjective outcomes with comparable reoperation rates and the potential for reduced risk of osteoarthritis over time versus meniscectomy.”
Those ‘appropriately selected’ patients. Anyone can justify any operation with it, yet nobody can give an exact meaning of what that means. This opinion piece does not make an exception. The authors simply advocate an “individualized approach” without providing any content about what it actually means.