Impact of a national guideline on use of knee arthroscopy: An interrupted time-series analysis

OBJECTIVE: To assess the impact of the Swedish health authority recommendation against the use of knee arthroscopy in patients aged ≥40 years with knee osteoarthritis (OA).

DESIGN: Interrupted time series analysis.

SETTING: Public health care in Skåne region.

PARTICIPANTS: Patients aged ≥40 years who underwent knee arthroscopy from January 2010 to December 2015.

INTERVENTION(S): National guideline's recommendation against the use of knee arthroscopy in patients with knee OA.

MAIN OUTCOME MEASURE(S): 1) proportion of patients aged ≥40 years with a main diagnosis of Knee OA and/or degenerative meniscal lesions (DML) who underwent knee arthroscopy, and 2) overall knee arthroscopy rate per 100,000 Skåne population aged ≥40 years.

RESULTS: A total of 6,155 knee arthroscopy were performed among people aged ≥40 years during study period. Of 42,044 patients with Knee OA/DML, 3,728 had knee arthroscopy. The recommendation was associated with reductions in the use of knee arthroscopy and two years after the recommendation, there was a reduction of 28.6% (95% CI: 9.3, 47.8) and 34.7% (23.9, 45.4) in proportion of Knee OA/DML patients with knee arthroscopy and the overall knee arthroscopy rate, respectively, relative to that expected if pre-recommendation trend continued. Our sensitivity analysis showed that the use of total knee replacement was stable over the study period.

CONCLUSION: The national recommendation was associated with reduction in use of knee arthroscopy in public health care in southern Sweden. However, still 4.5% of these patients underwent knee arthroscopy in 2015 implying that more efforts are required to achieve the recommended target.