Mylène Jansen

78 Chapter 4 To the Editor, Recently, The National Healthcare Institute of the Netherlands reviewed several publications on joint distraction to decide on reimbursement of this treatment in the Netherlands. During their survey, The National Healthcare Institute also reviewed the publication of Jansen et al . published in Cartilage. On reviewing the publication, they found an inconsistency between described data and data presented in tables. Based on that they contacted us as main authors and inquired the correct data. As such, an immediate thorough recheck on all source data files was performed. It was discovered that there was indeed an inconsistency present for some of the parameters. We feel that despite the minor difference between the published data and the correct data, and despite the fact that the general conclusion and discussion of the publication do not change, this needs to be amended. As such, we will outline the textual changes by presenting the updated text by paragraph, with changes shown in italics, and present updated versions of Table 2, Table 3, and Figure 1. Abstract At 2 years, the total WOMAC score (KJD TKA +30.4 (95%CI 23.0–37.9) points; TKA +42.4 (38.1–46.8); KJD HTO +21.6 (13.8–29.4); HTO +29.2 (23.6–34.8); all p <0.05) and radiographic minimum JSW (KJD TKA +0.9 (9.2–1.6) mm; KJD HTO +0.9 (0.5–1.4); HTO +0.6 (0.3–0.9); all p <0.05) were still increased for all groups. Results Patient-reported outcome measures As primary outcome, a clear and clinically significant improvement in total WOMAC score (Figure 1) was present 2 years after treatment for all 4 groups (KJD TKA Δ30; TKA Δ42; KJD HTO Δ22; HTO Δ29; all p <0.001). KJD versus TKA The TKA group showed statistically significantly greater improvements than the KJD TKA group for most of the clinical parameters (Table 3), including the total WOMAC and total KOOS and most of their subscales (all p <0.035), the VAS pain ( p= 0.014), the EQ-5D ( p= 0.023), and the SF-36 PCS ( p <0.001). There was no significant difference for WOMAC stiffness ( p= 0.277), KOOS stiffness ( p= 0.212), the ICOAP ( p= 0.216), and ICOAP subscales (both p >0.108). As the change in WOMAC over 2 years was on average considerably more than