This study was just published in the Arthroscopy: Little agreement between preoperative Kellgren and Lawrence classification and intraoperative Outerbridge score in patients undergoing arthroscopic partial meniscectomy And, well, the title says it all. Their study included over 400 middle-aged (average 49 years) obese patients (average BMI 30.2). Authors wrote: Understanding the degree of cartilage degeneration […]
Tag: low-value care
To my fellow orthopods 1 – Why do we oppose orthopaedic sham-controlled trials so aggressively?
Sometimes, I wonder if orthopaedics is a branch of modern medicine at all. While large, multicenter RCTs are common practice in other fields, in orthopaedics, we seem to rely on mechanical reasoning, biological plausibility, and uncontrolled before-after studies. This duality has become very visible with regard to orthopaedic sham-controlled trials. A recent research in the […]
How to recognize low-value treatments in orthopaedic research?
Low-value care is defined “as the use of a health service for which the harms or costs outweigh the benefits“. In other words, if a certain surgical procedure cannot be shown to result in superior results compared to nonoperative treatment or simple watchful waiting, this procedure can be labelled as low-value care. Randomized clinical trials […]
Inefficiency is a major problem in the orthopaedic surgery and treatment of MSK diseases
The following text was written by my esteemed research colleague and a collaborator Teemu Karjalainen. It was published as a scientific editorial in the Finnish Medical Journal. This editorial is very solid description of the current state in the treatment of MSK diseases and I advise all orthopaedic surgeons to read it carefully and assimilate […]
Why double placebo studies are so common in orthopaedics?
The title is slightly provocative, but I will explain it. On of the leading orthopaedic journals, Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery Am, referenced a study published in another leading orthopaedic journal under a Evidence-based orthopaedics section. This is somewhat controversial. The study, JBJS referenced, was published in September in the American Journal of Sports […]