Annals of translational medicine
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"Arthroscopic Partial Meniscectomy versus Sham Surgery for a Degenerative Meniscal Tear" published in the New England Journal of Medicine on December 26, 2013 draws the conclusion that arthroscopic partial medial meniscectomy provides no significant benefit over sham surgery in patients with a degenerative meniscal tear and no knee osteoarthritis. This result argues against the current practice of performing arthroscopic partial meniscectomy (APM) in patients with a degenerative meniscal tear. Since the number of APM performed has been increasing, the information provided by this study should lead to a change in clinical care of patients with a degenerative meniscus tear.
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On June 18, 2015, the New England Journal of Medicine published an article entitled "Permissive underfeeding of standard enteral feeding in critically ill adults", which reports the results of a study that examined the impact of prolonged nutritional energy restriction for critically ill patients. The study design was unique in the sense that patients in both groups received similar doses of protein during the intervention, while the non-protein energy intake was reduced in the intervention group. ⋯ These results add to a growing body of high quality evidence against the dogmatic belief that full enteral or parenteral feeding should be given as early as possible during critical illness to prevent complications. Further research is now needed to address the question of the optimal timing to provide more nutritional support for the benefit of the patients, possibly guided by improved biomarkers that need to be developed and validated, and to investigate underlying mechanisms.