Knee Pain and arthroscopy: should you have it?
Hello
I looked at another article looking at the effectiveness of arthroscopy for degenerative knee disease, like arthritis and this is the very first line of the article “ Knee arthroscopy is not cost-effective and is strongly discouraged for patients with degenerative knee disease.”
“ More research is unlikely to alter this recommendation”.
I could end this right here but let us look at what else they said that.
The authors included in the definition of degenerative knee disease as patients with knee pain especially those older than 35 with or without x-rays showing osteoarthritis, meniscus tears, locking or catching of the knee and whether the knee pain is new or been there for a while.
This current report is based on reviews of 13 trials that looked at 1700 patients where they compared arthroscopy to no surgery.
This surgery is ingrained in medical school education and is commonly done for many reasons, financial incentives are certainly one of them, the authors say.
They go on to say “ Really, there is almost no long term benefit at all and there are risks with surgery. We weren’t able to find any evidence to support its use.
Wow….. they couldn’t even find evidence to say it works….
I am going to leave it there.
Do you still think knee surgery is the right option for you?
Jason
