Patient-reported Outcomes of Short-term Intra-articular Hyaluronic Acid for Osteoarthritis of the Knee: A Consecutive Case Series
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Background Supartz FX (Seikagaku Corp., Tokyo, Japan) has been investigated as a therapeutic for knee osteoarthritis (OA) due to its claimed preservation of viscoelastic joint properties and improvement in pain and physical function. The US prescribing information suggests patients may experience benefit with as few as three of five injections administered once weekly. However, recommended guidelines from the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons (AAOS) do not support injectable hyaluronate due to controversial results of randomized controlled trials. Objective Do patients experience statistically and/or clinically significant improvement in disability scores following three injections? Methods A total of 32 patients with a mean age of 66±14 years receiving Supartz FX were reviewed in a prospective, observational study. Functional outcome data via Western Ontario and McMaster Universities Osteoarthritis Index (WOMAC) scores for pain, stiffness, and physical function were collected at 0, 1, 2 and 3 weeks, and means were analyzed via paired t-test. Results Three injections at one-week intervals resulted in statistically significant improvement across all sub scores (p<0.05). Confidence intervals (CIs) of treatment effects (ES, 95% CI) for pain (0.27, 95% CI 0.99, 1.26), stiffness (0.17, 95% CI 0.50, 0.67), and function (0.55, 95% CI 2.79, 3.35) were recorded and compared to published minimum clinically important improvement (MCII) thresholds. Conclusion Despite manufacturer recommendations, in this study short-term use of Supartz FX for knee OA does not meet clinically significant thresholds as the treatment effects for WOMAC sub scores fail to satisfy published MCII for pain (0.39), stiffness (0.39) and function (0.37). In light of these findings and in concordance with recommendations set forth by the AAOS, this study contributes to a preventative medicine database that encourages exploration of non-surgical and non-opiate modalities for the management of osteoarthritis.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.004 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.002 | 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; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
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".