Effect of Early Surgery vs Physical Therapy on Knee Function Among Patients With Nonobstructive Meniscal Tears: The ESCAPE Randomized Clinical Trial

This report has been verified by one or more authors of the original publication.

321 patients with a nonobstructive mensical tear were randomized to either an 8-week physical therapy program or to arthroscopic partial meniscectomy. The primary purpose of this study was to determine if the PT group was noninferior to the APM for outcome on the International Knee Documentation Committee (IKDC) subjective score at a noninferiority margin of 8pts. When analyzed in both intention-to-treat and as-treated models, the overall effect on IKDC subjective score throughout follow-up in the PT group was noninferior to the APM group, though when analyzed specifically at 12 and 24 months, noninferiority could not be established, as the upper limits of the confidence intervals exceeded the noninferiority margin.