ArticleJournal of experimental orthopaedics2026
Routine circumferential patellar denervation during total knee arthroplasty did not consistently eliminate neural structures at the lateral patellar border: A prospective randomised controlled trial with histological outcomes.
Article in Journal of experimental orthopaedics, 2026. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Not yet cited in PubMed.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
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
0 citing papers in PubMed.
No citing paper in PubMed yet.
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.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Purpose: Circumferential patellar denervation is widely performed during total knee arthroplasty under the assumption that electrocautery ablates nociceptive neural structures at the lateral patellar border. However, the microscopic effect of this procedure on neural substrates remains poorly defined. This study aimed to determine (1) whether histological characteristics differ between non-denervated and denervated lateral patellar borders, and (2) which neural elements are affected by routine circumferential denervation. Methods: In this prospective randomised controlled trial with histological outcomes, 19 patients undergoing primary total knee arthroplasty were allocated to either a Facetectomy-First Group ( Results: All specimens demonstrated a consistent layered architecture with loose connective tissue present in 100% of cases. Nerve fibres were identified in connective tissue in all specimens and in most adipose layers, irrespective of surgical sequence. nerve fibres were detected in multiple tissue compartments in both groups. The mean number of nerve fibres groups per specimen was higher in the Facetectomy-First Group (1.6 ± 0.7) than in the Denervation-First Group (1.1 ± 0.3), without reaching statistical significance ( Conclusions: Routine circumferential patellar denervation did not consistently eliminate neural structures at the lateral patellar border, and no significant histological differences were observed between the Facetectomy-First and Denervation-First Groups. These findings suggest that standard electrocautery-based denervation may not reliably disrupt morphologically identifiable neural structures in this region. The functional implications of these findings remain uncertain and were not assessed in this study. Further investigations integrating advanced neural characterisation and clinical correlation are required to better define the biological and clinical impact of this procedure. Level of Evidence: Level III.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
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.