Valgus Bracing for Knee Osteoarthritis: A Meta‐Analysis of Randomized Trials
Bibliographic record
Abstract
OBJECTIVE: To evaluate the effects of valgus knee bracing on pain and function, and compliance and complications, in patients with medial knee osteoarthritis (OA). METHODS: A meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials that compared changes in patient-reported pain and/or function in patients with medial knee OA was performed. Seven databases were searched from their inception to January 2014. Two reviewers independently determined study eligibility, rated risk of bias, and extracted data. Pooled estimates and 95% confidence intervals (95% CIs) for standardized mean differences (SMDs) for the improvement in pain (and function) were calculated. Event rates (proportions) were calculated for studies that reported complications. RESULTS: Six studies were included in the meta-analysis. Overall, there was a statistically significant difference favoring the valgus brace group for improvement in pain (SMD 0.33 [95% CI 0.13, 0.52], P = 0.001) and function (SMD 0.22 [95% CI 0.02, 0.41], P = 0.03). When compared to a control group that did not use an orthosis, the effect size was moderate for pain (SMD 0.56 [95% CI 0.03, 1.09], P = 0.04) and function (SMD 0.48 [95% CI 0.02, 0.95], P = 0.04). When compared to a control group that used a control orthosis, only a small, statistically significant effect for pain remained (SMD 0.33 [95% CI 0.08, 0.58], P = 0.01). Instructions for brace use varied considerably and compliance ranged from 45% to 100%. Up to 25% of patients reported minor complications with brace use. CONCLUSION: Meta-analysis of randomized trials suggests valgus bracing for medial knee OA results in small-to-moderate improvements in pain. Effect sizes vary based on study design and warrant future research.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.019 | 0.007 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.035 | 0.026 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.004 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; both teacher heads agree on what is shown here.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".