<b>Medical and Surgical Management of Osteoarthritis of Knees</b>
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Background: Knee osteoarthritis (OA) is a progressive whole-joint degenerative disease and a major global cause of pain, disability, and reduced quality of life. Multiple medical, biologic, and surgical treatment options exist, yet optimal sequencing, patient selection, and timing of surgery remain areas of clinical uncertainty. A comprehensive synthesis of current evidence is required to guide individualized treatment pathways. Objective: To systematically review the literature on medical, intra-articular injection-based, and surgical management of knee osteoarthritis, with particular emphasis on comparative effectiveness, surgical indications, and optimal timing of operative intervention. Methods: This systematic review followed PRISMA guidelines. Searches of PubMed/MEDLINE, Scopus, Web of Science, and Cochrane Library were conducted for studies published between January 2000 and December 2024. Eligible studies included randomized controlled trials, cohort studies, and high-quality systematic reviews evaluating conservative management, intra-articular therapies, osteotomies, unicompartmental knee arthroplasty (UKA), and total knee arthroplasty (TKA). Data were extracted on patient characteristics, interventions, clinical outcomes, functional scores, and complications. Risk of bias was assessed using the Cochrane RoB tool, Newcastle–Ottawa Scale, and AMSTAR-2. A narrative synthesis was performed due to clinical heterogeneity. Results: A total of 432 records were identified, with 17 studies meeting inclusion criteria. Non-pharmacological strategies and NSAIDs provided symptomatic relief in early disease, while corticosteroids and hyaluronic acid offered short-term benefit. Platelet-rich plasma demonstrated longer-lasting improvements in early to moderate OA compared with corticosteroids and HA. High tibial and distal femoral osteotomies were effective joint-preserving procedures for younger, active patients with unicompartmental OA and malalignment. UKA yielded faster recovery and more natural knee kinematics in appropriately selected patients with isolated disease. TKA provided the most predictable long-term pain relief and functional improvement in advanced or multicompartmental OA, with implant survivorship exceeding 90% at 10–15 years. Timing and patient selection emerged as the most important determinants of surgical outcomes. Conclusion: Effective management of knee OA requires a stage-specific, individualized approach integrating conservative, biologic, and surgical strategies. Non-operative therapies remain foundational in early OA, while biologic injections may bridge symptoms until surgical intervention is appropriate. Osteotomy and UKA offer valuable joint-preserving options in selected patients, whereas TKA remains the definitive treatment for advanced disease. Aligning treatment modality with disease stage, alignment, compartment involvement, and patient goals optimizes long-term outcomes and joint function.
Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.
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 | 0.010 | 0.041 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.003 | 0.003 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.006 | 0.008 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.003 | 0.002 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.010 | 0.001 |
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".