Physical therapy vs. glucocorticoid injection in patients with meniscal tears and knee osteoarthritis: a multi-center, randomized, controlled trial
Bibliographic record
Abstract
BACKGROUND: Physical therapy is commonly recommended for treating meniscus tears and knee osteoarthritis (KOA). However, data from randomized trials that compare the effectiveness of this treatment with that of glucocorticoid injections are lacking. METHODS: This randomized, single-blind, multicenter trial included 273 patients with KOA who were divided into either the physical therapy group (n = 133) or the glucocorticoid injection group (n = 140). The physical therapy included kinesiology tape, exercise protocols, and exercise training programs to increase core stability and periprosthetic muscle strength. The primary endpoint was the overall Western Ontario and McMaster Universities Osteoarthritis Index (WOMAC) score at 1 year. Additionally, proprioception and safety were assessed. All analyses were performed with the use of the intention-to-treat approach. The data are reported as percentages (%) (n), and the threshold for statistical significance was p < 0.05. RESULTS: There was no significant difference in the baseline characteristics between the two groups (p > 0.05). The average (± SD) WOMAC score at 1-year was 76.85 ± 2.50 in the physiotherapy group. And 99.55 ± 2.09 in the glucocorticoid injection group (mean difference = - 22.70; 95% confidence interval [95% CI] - 23.43 to - 21.96; p < 0.001). Compared with the glucocorticoid injection group, the physical therapy group exhibited superior performance in terms of proprioception, especially in the eyes-closed in situ stepping test (14.27 ± 0.75 versus 5.98 ± 0.74; mean difference = 8.29; 95% CI 8.09-8.50; p < 0.001). The incidence of serious adverse events at the 1-year follow-up was comparable between the two groups. Most of these events were determined to be complications arising from physical therapy and glucocorticoid injection. CONCLUSIONS: The results revealed that pain, quality of life, and balance were greater in the physiotherapy group than in the glucocorticoid injection group within the 1-year study period. However, the long-term effects beyond this timeframe remain unknown, and future studies with extended follow-up times are needed to confirm the sustainability of these benefits. TRIAL REGISTRATION: The protocol was approved by the local ethics committee of the ethical commission of the Hebei Sports Science Research Institute (SEC20200213019) and Ethics Committee of Sichuan Taikang Hospital (SCTK-IRB-032). The study was registered at the Chinese Clinical Trial Registry (ChiCTR2000032508).
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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 | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 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 teacher head, 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".