Help me find this study on the overall effectiveness of orthoscopic surgery

A professor in my kinesiology class today mentioned that he tore a meniscus in his left knee while walking, and plans to have surgery on that knee over spring break to fix the problem.

I mentioned that I recalled hearing on NPR a few months back about a study on the overall outcomes of orthoscopic surgery. Basically, the study had a control group, a regular orthoscopic treatment group, and a placebo orthoscopic treatment group. That’s right, they opened up the knees, pretended to poke around in there, and then surveyed all groups about the outcomes of their respective joints for several months. The results showed that the placebo grouphad the same outcomes as actual treatment groups.

Can someone help me locate this study?

Of course my prof would be interested in seeing it, but I was curious about the study although I never did more follow up back when I heard about it.

Also, if anyone has any particular insight or criticism of the study, I’d love to hear that too.

I believe that it’s called arthroscopic surgery and not orthoscopic surgery, which might explain why you couldn’t find information on it.

Damn.

Innervated by poor spelling/word choice again.

Never again will I be thwarted by homonimes!

Seriously though, here is the actual study that I was looking for:
http://www.hopkins-arthritis.som.jhmi.edu/news-archive/2002/arthroscopy.html

Unfortunately, it deals with arthritis rather than meniscus tears, so I don’t know if it’s even worth bringing up.