Mr Steve Bollen’s open letter to the editor of the BMJ about the role of knee arthroscopy
Recently, a number of ill-informed and blinkered articles have been published in journals whose editors really ought to know better, making irrational and poorly educated statements such as ‘arthroscopy doesn’t work!’
Arthroscopy is simply a tool for looking (‘scopy’) into a joint (‘arthro’): it doesn’t say anything about why the procedure might be being performed, what might actually be found inside the joint or what might actually be done, in terms of the actual surgery procedures themselves.
The key to a successful and appropriate knee arthroscopy follows exactly the same rules as any other surgical procedure: appropriate patient selection; picking the right patient with the right symptoms and the right pathology/trauma, and then doing the correct procedure at the correct time, and doing it properly (i.e. with the best possible surgeon doing the best possible job). That’s when you get the best patient outcomes!
CLICK HERE to read an open letter published by Mr Steve Bollen, Knee Surgeon in Leeds, to the editor of the BMJ, explaining the reality of the situation and rightly countering some of the misinformation and scaremongering that has been propagated by some people who simply don’t seem to understand a subject about which they seem more than happy to comment upon…