When you thought you had seen it all… Part 2

Sham-surgery or surgical placebo is increasingly used in orthopaedic randomized controlled trials. Most notable studies include comparison between sham-surgery and arthroscopic partial meniscectomy in knee and arthoscopic subacromial decompression in shoulder. These studies have truly challenged the traditional treatment guidelines in degenerative knee and shoulder conditions. I have previously posted about population level changes in these surgeries.

Study by Sochacki et al., titled Sham Surgery Studies in Orthopedic Surgery May Just Be a Sham: A Systematic Review of Randomized Placebo-Controlled Trials, was recently published in the Arthroscopy journal.

As the name suggest this study is not really favoring sham-controlled studies. One of the main conclusion was as follows:

Randomized sham-controlled studies in orthopaedic sports medicine have significant methodologic deficiencies that may invalidate their conclusions.

I´ll leave this study here for now. This study is really thought provoking and in near future, I shall post lots of writing related to this piece.

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