Scientific Debates

Orthopaedics is a diverse and an ever evolving branch of medicine. Despite the rapid advancements in every subspecialty of this field, numerous controversies persist and every orthopaedic surgeon comes across these in his/her day-to-day practice. Evidence based orthopaedics has probably solved a few, but some questions still remain unanswered. One such example is the dilemma regarding resurfacing of patella during primary total knee arthroplasty (TKA). In the largest randomised controlled trial of patellar resurfacing reported to date (JBJS Am 2011;93:1473-81), it was found that the functional outcome, reoperation rate, and total health care cost five years after primary TKA were not significantly affected by the addition of patellar resurfacing to the surgical procedure. As such, many times we all have to rely on our personal preferences. As part of the SICOT e-Newsletter, we have identified a few such topics of controversies in adult reconstructive surgery which we plan to discuss in our e-Newsletter. Some of these include:

  1. PCL sparing vs sacrificing TKA

  2. High tibial osteotomy vs unicompartment knee replacement

  3. Patellar resurfacing vs shaving in TKA

  4. Arthroscopy for early osteoarthritis knees

  5. Resurfacing THR

  6. Minimally invasive arthroplasty

SICOT members are invited to send their expert opinions to the Editorial Secretary ([email protected]). The debate section will act as a platform for a healthy discussion on these topics of controversy. We anticipate your valuable contributions and hope that readers of our e-Newsletter enjoy this section.