Walk It Off: Exercise Therapy for Meniscal Tears Equivalent To Surgery
Exercise-based physical therapy remains in no way inferior to arthroscopic partial meniscectomy for treating degenerative meniscal tears, according to long-term data from the ESCAPE trial, suggesting physical therapy to be the preferred treatment over surgery. At the 5-year mark, the patient’s reported knee function after 16 sessions of physical therapy was not lower than that observed after surgery, with a between-group difference of 3.5 points on the International Knee Documentation Committee Subjective Form 100 points (95% CI 0.7-6). ,3, P <0.001 for noninferiority) in the intention-to-treat analysis, according to movement scientist Julia Noorduyn, MSc, of OLVG Amsterdam, The Netherlands, and colleagues. For the surgery and exercise therapy groups, respectively, the mean improvement from baseline was 29.6 and 25.1 points at 5 years. The progression of knee osteoarthritis, assessed radiographically, was equally low between the two groups, Noorduyn’s team reported in JAMA Network