Efficacy of viscosupplementation injections in preventing knee surgery for osteoarthritis

Are viscosupplementation injections effective for treating osteoarthritis (OA) of the knee? Do patients who have the injections still elect surgery to treat OA of the knee?

These were the main questions posed by Our Medical Group in 2017. 

In order to answer these questions, I designed a retrospective study of Medical Group patients who received the viscosupplementation injections to quantify their history of injections and whether they eventually underwent knee surgery.

Other questions which came up in this study were

1. How many injections were given for diagnoses other than OA of the knee?
2. How many injections were given in an entirely different body part such as the shoulder?
3. Were outcomes in obese and elderly populations different than overall?
4. How long was the average time to surgery after the first viscosupplementation injection?

So these questions are answered here as well.

My conclusions for this study were around 35% of patients receiving the viscosupplementation injections underwent knee surgery by the time the study data was pulled. The average time to surgery was two years, and the percent of injection patients having surgery within two years was around 20%. The average number of injections for patients who would eventually undergo surgery was 5.4.

I hope you find this study useful in designing your own retrospective patient studies regarding viscosupplementation or other treatments which may only delay surgery.

Please feel free to contact me at eptatum@gmail.com with any questions regarding methodology.