Introduction: The aim of this work was to collect literature data to assess the knee orthosis use with controlled clinical trials.
Method: The international literature relating to the years 1980-2000 was carried out with the Medline data bank.
Results: Five hundred and twelve articles were collected and 35 were retained, 32 related to clinical studies and three related to toxicity. The evaluations were performed with either functional tests or clinical studies. The open-non controlled clinical trials are far higher than prospective comparative clinical trials that were developed only during last years. Main criteria of judgement are articular stability, functional pain and clinical index. Most of studies focused the anterior cruciate ligament lesions, patellar pains and osteoarthritis.
Discussion: This review of the literature may help to determine the interest and the limits of orthosis use as well as side effect occurrence. Both these clinical and experimental data point out the methodological difficulties facing the investigatory clinician in knee orthosis evaluation.
Conclusion: Many studies contributed to the clinical evaluation of the knee orthosis. This work highlights various clinical indications for the same orthosis and variable results for the same indication. These methodological difficulties may not prevent a further evaluation of these devices to improve their use in current practice.