Efficacy and AEs of intraarticular viscosupplementation with HA in knee osteoarthritis

Hyaluronic acid injection therapy for osteoarthritis of the knee: concordant efficacy and conflicting serious adverse events in two systematic reviews.

Article specifications

This Systematic review was published in 2016 in Journal of Syst Rev. (IF 2014: 3.63) by American specialists. Systematic reviews of treatment efficacy and adverse events (AEs) of hyaluronic acid (HA) injections report conflicting evidence about the balance of benefits and harms.

 

Result

Trials show a small but significant effect of HA on function on which recent systematic reviews agree, but lack of AE synthesis standardization leads to opposite conclusions about the balance of benefits and harms. A limitation of the re-analysis of the prior systematic review is that it required imputation of missing data.