- Many middle-aged and older adults with torn cartilage and pain in their knee are not likely to benefit from so-called arthroscopic surgery, a review of past studies suggests.
"In most circumstances, patients should try physiotherapy first," Abram said by email."If this does not improve symptoms, knee surgery may be beneficial, especially in patients without osteoarthritis and with specific symptoms." In the current analysis, all of the trial participants who got knee operations had a partial meniscectomy, removing only some of this cartilage.
Two trials with 244 patients without arthritis pain also found surgery associated with a moderate to much larger improvement in quality of life than nonsurgical treatment. "The effect of meniscal surgery for younger populations 18-40 years has never been compared with non-surgical treatments ," Thorlund said by email."The best treatment - surgical or non-surgical - remains to be established in this younger patient group."