A critical appraisal of "Arthroscopic hip surgery compared with physiotherapy and activity modification for the treatment of symptomatic femoroacetabular impingement: multicentre randomised controlled trial"

Femoroacetabular impingement (FAI) is a syndrome where there is either a cam or pincer morphology where the femoral head and acetabulum pinch up against each other. The common methodologies to rehabilitate FAI are surgery and physical therapy. My critical appraisal is over the article by Palmer et al. which discusses which of these methodologies is the best. I started off by looking at different data bases and complying the top three randomized control trail research articles. Finally, I choose my article because it was the best one that could help me answer my question. The article is randomized and does not have bias because it blinded the clinicians who were assessing the patients. The introduction of the article gives a background in femoroacetabular impingement (FAI) syndrome and why this study is relevant. However, the researchers give more information over surgery compared to physiotherapy. In the methods, the authors described how they divided the groups in good detail. There was a large population of patients in the study, and even though the patients were not blinded, the clinicians accessing the patients were. The results section was presented clearly and had good graphs and tables to better present their research. In the discussion section, the limitations were recognized, and it states that the interventions were performed by high skilled professionals.