Trial reportKnee surgery, sports traumatology, arthroscopy : official journal of the ESSKA2017
Knee joint distraction compared with high tibial osteotomy: a randomized controlled trial.
Trial report in Knee surgery, sports traumatology, arthroscopy : official journal of the ESSKA, 2017. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 48 papers, 5 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
48 citing papers in PubMed, 5 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 117 citations in OpenAlex.
- Surgery for early structural osteoarthritis of the hip and knee: the SCORE evidence synthesis and economic evaluation.Health technology assessment (Winchester, England) · 2026Pooled it
- Surgical interventions for symptomatic knee osteoarthritis: a network meta-analysis of randomized control trials.BMC musculoskeletal disorders · 2023Pooled it
- The Relationships between Coronal Plane Alignments and Patient-Reported Outcomes Following High Tibial Osteotomy: A Systematic Review.Cartilage · 2021Pooled it
- Pooled it
- Surgical interventions for symptomatic mild to moderate knee osteoarthritis.The Cochrane database of systematic reviews · 2019Pooled it
- The Knee Arthroplasty versus Joint Distraction Study for Osteoarthritis (KARDS): lessons learnt from an internal pilot trial.Health technology assessment (Winchester, England) · 2025Trial
- Trial
- Intra-Articular Injection of Autologous Adipose Tissue-Derived Mesenchymal Stem Cells for the Treatment of Knee Osteoarthritis: A Phase IIb, Randomized, Placebo-Controlled Clinical Trial.Stem cells translational medicine · 2019Trial
- [Knee joint distraction : A short narrative literature review].Orthopadie (Heidelberg, Germany) · 2026Review
- Article
- Knee Joint Distraction for Bicompartmental Knee Osteoarthritis in Asian Patients.Malaysian orthopaedic journal · 2025Article
- Patient Reported and Structural Outcomes of Knee Joint Distraction versus High Tibial Osteotomy and Total Knee Arthroplasty: A Meta-Analysis.Malaysian orthopaedic journal · 2025Article
- Delaying arthroplasty: The potential of knee joint distraction in young osteoarthritis patients-A prospective case series.Journal of experimental orthopaedics · 2025Article
- Knee arthroplasty compared with joint distraction for osteoarthritis: a phase III randomized controlled trial.Bone & joint open · 2025Article
- Comparison of Clinical Efficacy and Mechanical Characteristics of Two Knee Distraction Devices With Relevance for Clinical Practice.Cartilage · 2024Article
- Management of Medial Femorotibial Knee Osteoarthritis in Conjunction with Anterior Cruciate Ligament Deficiency: Technical Note and Literature Review.Journal of clinical medicine · 2024Review
- Two-year post-distraction cartilage-related structural improvement is accompanied by increased serum full-length SIRT1.Arthritis research & therapy · 2024Article
- Emerging technology has a brilliant future: the CRISPR-Cas system for senescence, inflammation, and cartilage repair in osteoarthritis.Cellular & molecular biology letters · 2024Review
- Comparison of short-term clinical outcomes between open-wedge high tibial osteotomy and tibial condylar valgus osteotomy.BMC musculoskeletal disorders · 2024Article
- Matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization mass spectrometry imaging (MALDI-MSI) reveals potential lipid markers between infrapatellar fat pad biopsies of osteoarthritis and cartilage defect patients.Analytical and bioanalytical chemistry · 2023Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
8 authors at 3 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
purposeBoth, knee joint distraction as a relatively new approach and valgus-producing opening-wedge high tibial osteotomy (HTO), are knee-preserving treatments for knee osteoarthritis (OA). The efficacy of knee joint distraction compared to HTO has not been reported.
methodsSixty-nine patients with medial knee joint OA with a varus axis deviation of <10° were randomized to either knee joint distraction (n = 23) or HTO (n = 46). Questionnaires were assessed at baseline and 3, 6, and 12 months. Joint space width (JSW) as a surrogate measure for cartilage thickness was determined on standardized semi-flexed radiographs at baseline and 1-year follow-up.
resultsAll patient-reported outcome measures (PROMS) improved significantly over 1 year (at 1 year p < 0.02) in both groups. At 1 year, the HTO group showed slightly greater improvement in 4 of the 16 PROMS (p < 0.05). The minimum medial compartment JSW increased 0.8 ± 1.0 mm in the knee joint distraction group (p = 0.001) and 0.4 ± 0.5 mm in the HTO group (p < 0.001), with minimum JSW improvement in favour of knee joint distraction (p = 0.05). The lateral compartment showed a small increase in the knee joint distraction group and a small decrease in the HTO group, leading to a significant increase in mean JSW for knee joint distraction only (p < 0.02).
conclusionCartilaginous repair activity, as indicated by JSW, and clinical outcome improvement occurred with both, knee joint distraction and HTO. These findings suggest that knee joint distraction may be an alternative therapy for medial compartmental OA with a limited mechanical leg malalignment. LEVEL OF EVIDENCE: Randomized controlled trial, Level I.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.