Minimally invasive versus open surgery for acute Achilles tendon rupture: a systematic review of overlapping meta-analyses

Achilles tendon ruptures can be treated surgically using either MIS or OS [3, 28–30]. In recent years, multiple meta-analyses have been conducted to assess the difference regarding MIS versus OS. However, discordant results were observed among these meta-analyses [14–17], which complicated decision-makers. To solve this problem, systematic reviews of overlapping meta-analyses are increasingly published in medical fields [18–21]. To our knowledge, this is the first systematic review of overlapping meta-analyses on the topic of MIS versus OS for acute Achilles tendon ruptures. In this study, four meta-analyses were included using a systematic literature review. Based on the Jadad decision algorithm, a high-quality meta-analysis with more RCTs was selected as the current best available evidence [14].

We found that most of the meta-analyses comprehensively conducted the literature search within a similar period, but they did not include the same primary trials, and did not provide the same conclusion on the surgical intervention for acute Achilles tendon rupture [14–17]. This phenomenon can be attributed to multiple factors, including the clinical question, study selection and inclusion, data extraction, quality evaluation, assessment of the ability to combine studies, and statistical methods for data pooling [22]. A decision algorithm, which was adopted in this study, was designed to choose the high-quality level of evidence from currently discordant systematic reviews [22]. This tool was widely used to find the best available evidence among overlapping systematic reviews [18–21].

In this study, the meta-analysis by McMahon et al. [14] was selected according to the Jadad decision algorithm. Their study demonstrated that there were no differences between MIS and OS with respect to rerupture, deep infection, deep vein thrombosis, adhesions, sural nerve injury, and subjective outcomes (fair). However, MIS was superior to OS in superficial infection and subjective outcomes (good to excellent). In other words, when comparing with OS, MIS could decrease the incidence of superficial infection and could improve subjective patient satisfaction, while not raising the risk of rerupture. Therefore, the best available evidence suggests that MIS may be superior to OS for the treatment of acute Achilles tendon rupture. This conclusion should be cautiously interpreted and confirmed by further well-designed RCTs due to the small sample size of the selected meta-analysis.

There are several limitations in this study. First, the literature search was limited to English papers. Non-English literature could not be included in this systematic review, despite that multiple databases were searched. Second, in order to get the best available evidence, only meta-analyses of RCTs were comprised. Nevertheless, all the included studies were Level-II evidence. Therefore, this systematic review could not offer treatment recommendations based on Level-I evidence.