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©The Author(s) 2016. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Orthop. May 18, 2016; 7(5): 287-292
Published online May 18, 2016. doi: 10.5312/wjo.v7.i5.287
Published online May 18, 2016. doi: 10.5312/wjo.v7.i5.287
Controversial role of arthroscopic meniscectomy of the knee: A review
Austin Y Ha, Robert M Shalvoy, Anne Voisinet, Jennifer Racine, Roy K Aaron, Department of Orthopaedic Surgery, Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University, Providence, RI 02906, United States
Author contributions: Ha AY contributed to the study conception and design, the acquisition, analysis, and interpretation of data, and the drafting of the manuscript; Shalvoy RM contributed to the analysis and interpretation of data and critically revised the manuscript; Voisinet A and Racine J contributed to the acquisition and analysis of data; Aaron RK contributed to the study conception and design, the acquisition, analysis, and interpretation of data, the drafting of the manuscript, as well as the critical revision of the manuscript.
Conflict-of-interest statement: The authors have no conflict of interest to disclose.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Correspondence to: Roy K Aaron, MD, Professor, Department of Orthopaedic Surgery, Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University, 100 Butler Drive, Providence, RI 02906, United States. roy_aaron@brown.edu
Telephone: +1-401-8615832
Received: June 29, 2015
Peer-review started: July 2, 2015
First decision: August 25, 2015
Revised: January 13, 2016
Accepted: January 27, 2016
Article in press: January 29, 2016
Published online: May 18, 2016
Processing time: 316 Days and 4.1 Hours
Peer-review started: July 2, 2015
First decision: August 25, 2015
Revised: January 13, 2016
Accepted: January 27, 2016
Article in press: January 29, 2016
Published online: May 18, 2016
Processing time: 316 Days and 4.1 Hours
Core Tip
Core tip: Despite several recent high-quality randomized controlled trials, the efficacy of arthroscopic partial meniscectomy (APM) for meniscal tears remains controversial. In this review, we analyzed the five most important trials for potential inadvertent biases. Each study was found to have some combination of selection, performance, detection, and transfer biases that compromise its conclusion. We also completed an alternative analysis of their results that took into account the observed high crossover rates. This analysis suggested that two studies whose original conclusions showed no superiority of APM may in fact support APM.