The Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery (American) 83:1275-1277 (2001)
© 2001 The Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery, Inc.
Operative versus Functional Treatment of Ruptures of the Lateral Ankle Ligaments
David B. Thordarson, MD,
A. C.M. Pijnenburg, MD,
C. N. van Dijk, MD, PhD,
P. M.M. Bossuyt, PhD and
R. K. Marti, MD, PhD
Department of Orthopaedic Surgery, Keck School of Medicine,
University of Southern California, 2025 Zonal Avenue, GNH 3900,
Los Angeles, CA 90089-9312 E-mail address: thordars@hsc.usc.edu
Corresponding author: A.C.M. Pijnenburg, MD, Orthopaedic Research
Center Amsterdam, Academisch Medisch Centrum, Meibergdreef 9, Postbus 22660,
1100 DD Amsterdam, The Netherlands E-mail address: a.c.pijnenburg@amc.uva.nl
To The Editor:
Upon reading "Treatment of Ruptures of the
Lateral Ankle Ligaments: A Meta-Analysis" (82-A: 761-773,
June 2000), by Pijnenburg et al., I was extremely surprised to find
that their results demonstrated that operative treatment yielded
superior results compared with those of functional treatment. The
authors specifically cited four previous literature reviews, all
of which found the results of functional treatment to be superior
to those of operative treatment, but they faulted these previous
studies for being merely descriptive, with no statistical analysis. They
noted that only seven studies met the rigid inclusion criteria for
their meta-analysis of the results of operative treatment
versus those of functional treatment1-7.
In order to evaluate the findings of this meta-analysis
further, I reviewed the studies that were available to me of those
seven.
I did not review the paper by Van der Ent7,
as it is apparently a thesis that was . . . [Full Text of this Article]

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