Meniscal Tear Outcome (METRO) review: a protocol for a systematic review summarising the clinical course and patient experiences of meniscal tears in the current literature

Introduction Meniscal tears are a common knee injury with an incidence of 60 per 100 000. Management of meniscal tears can include either non-operative measures or operative procedures such as arthroscopic partial meniscectomy (APM). Despite substantial research evaluating the effectiveness of APM in the recent past, little is known about the clinical course or the experiences of patients with a meniscal tear. Aim To summarise the short to long-term patterns of variability in outcome in patients with a meniscal tear. To summarise the evidence on patient experiences of meniscal tears. In particular, we will focus on patient experiences of treatment options, treatment pathways and their views of the outcomes used in meniscal tear research. Methods and analysis Two search strategies will be developed to identify citations from EMBASE, MEDLINE, AMED, CENTRAL, Web of Science and Sociofile. The date of our planned search is 14 August 2020. For the quantitative review we will identify studies reporting patient-reported outcome measures in patients after a meniscal tear. The standardised mean change will be used to assess the variation in size of response and summarise the overall response to each treatment option. All studies will undergo quality assessment using either the Cochrane risk of bias or the Newcastle-Ottawa tool. A qualitative systematic review will be used to identify studies reporting views and experiences of patients with a meniscal tear. All studies will be assessed using the Critical Appraisal Skills Programme tool and if sufficient data are present a meta-synthesis will be performed to identify first, second and third-order constructs. Ethics and dissemination Given the nature of this study, no formal ethical approval will be sought. Results from the review will be disseminated at national conferences and will be submitted to a peer-reviewed journal for publication. Lay summaries will be freely available via the study Twitter page. PROSPERO registration number CRD42019122179.