Abstract:

BACKGROUND: Since the ancient times the fumigation washing therapy with Chinese herbs are used to treat patients of knee osteoarthritis (KOA), nowadays domestic appeared many studies with Chinese herbs-aided arthroscopic surgery to treat KOA, but if the effectiveness is better than arthroscopic surgery alone, it is still lack of evidence.
OBJECTIVE: To evaluate whether the Chinese herbs-aided arthroscopic surgery is superior to arthroscopic surgery alone, and in order to provide some references for rational treatment in the clinic.
METHODS: A computer-based online search of Cochrane Library (Issue 1, 2010), Medline, CBM, VIP, CNKI and WANFANG DATA (from the data base building to the December, 2010) for the clinical randomized controlled trials of arthroscopic surgery alone and Chinese herbs-aided to treating KOA. Hand searching was also done to obtain any further information about the studies. After study selection, data collection, assessment and analyses were undertaken by two reviewers independently, and heterogeneous studies, we performed meta-analysis using RevMan 5.0 software.
RESULTS AND CONCLUSION: Eleven studies involving 1 304 knee joint were included, and the level of quality of most studies were B. Meta-analysis indicated that the effectiveness of Chinese herbs-aided arthroscopic surgery is superior to alone (or combined with Western drugs), but there are no studies concerning relative dose and side effect. So we suggest the researchers to perform studies in this kind which should obey the unity of the evaluation standard design multicenter, large sample, double-blind controlled studies in order to support the results.