# Early cartilage lesion and 5-year incident joint surgery in knee osteoarthritis patients: a retrospective cohort study

## TL;DR

This study found that cartilage lesions seen in early MRI scans of knee osteoarthritis patients do not predict the need for joint surgery within five years.

## Contribution

The study provides new evidence that early cartilage lesion features in MRI scans are not predictive of future knee surgery in OA patients.

## Key findings

- Cartilage lesion features were not significantly associated with 5-year incident knee surgery.
- Positive predictive values for all cartilage-related features were low.
- Results were consistent across medial and lateral compartments of the knee.

## Abstract

to investigate the association between cartilage lesion-related features observed in knee osteoarthritis (OA) patients’ first MRI examination and incident knee surgery within 5 years. Additionally, to assess the predictive value of these features for the incident knee surgery.

We identified patients diagnosed with knee OA and treated at our institution between January 2015 and January 2018, and retrieved their baseline clinical data and first MRI examination films from the information system. Next, we proceeded to determine joint space narrowing grade, cartilage lesion size grade, cartilage full-thickness loss grade and cartilage lesion sum score for the medial and lateral compartments, respectively. Generalized linear regression models examined the association of these features with 5-year incident knee surgery. Positive and negative predictive values (PPVs and NPVs) were determined referring to 5-year incident knee surgery.

Totally, 878 participants (knees) were found eligible to form the study population. Within the 5 years, surgery was performed on 61 knees. None of the cartilage-related features had been found significantly associated with incident surgery. The results were similar for medial and lateral compartments. The PPVs were low for all the features.

Among symptomatic clinically diagnosed OA knees, cartilage lesions observed in the first MRI examinations were not found to be associated with the occurrence of joint surgery within a 5-year period. All these cartilage-related features appear to have no additional value in predicting 5-year incident joint surgery.

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12891-024-07225-3.