Another surgery for chronic knee pain was proven to be useless

One of my favorite TMS stories was about a clinical trial conducted by Dr. Bruce Moseley, who was making a ton of money performing knee surgeries for osteoarthritis but had some suspicions about their efficacy. After he proved that sham surgeries were as good as real ones, he quit the lucrative business of "treating" osteoarthritis. Here is the study: https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa013259

A new study, fresh out of Finland, proved that a meniscus surgery results in worse outcomes for the patients:
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2026/apr/29/knee-surgery-cartilage-damage-patients-study (Knee surgery for cartilage damage does not benefit patients, study suggests)

If you are referred for surgery, think twice and weigh all the conservative options!

 

Woah....that is important and useful information!

 

My friend must be the exception, because she had surgery for a torn meniscus and her knee feels right as the rain.

 

meniscus tears are real though. They arent tms. The reason they heal poorly is because there is little bloodflow to the area. ‘Surgery’ is just cutting away the damaged and painful parts, which dont regenerate.

 

The tear itself is real. The associated symptoms, not always so much. The same was said of my torn hip labrum and my ortho said I should have surgery to repair it. Dug into it and similar to the above posted study, the outcomes didn't really persuade me to think it was going to be a good long term solution. Pain frequently comes back, and for someone like me where my structure itself likely caused the tear (my hips are impinged), it would likely happen again.

 

I too was concerned about a soft tissue injury and if there’s anything I’ve learned from the time I spent researching this it’s that when it comes to tendons, ligaments etc. even the specialists seem to not really know a lot. The info on bone breaks and muscle tears by contrast seems much more clear cut and the recovery timelines are pretty dependable. I’m inclined to agree with the study that in a lot of these cases the pain is TMS and that in fact our bodies are designed to heal in a way that we can keep going even with a minor tear and still not have pain. Otherwise these injuries would have been a serious evolutionary detriment to our early ancestors!