The Philosophy of Surgical Success and Outcomes of Cartiva Versus Fusion

Noninferiority studies in surgery are, by their very nature, reductionist. They use multiple variables to generate a yes or no answer about the new device being tested. A binary outcome is appropriate for a regulatory agency such as the Food and Drug Administration, but the clinical situation is more nuanced. It is critical to understand the underlying philosophies and choices that go into trial design when a surgeon is recommending a new device. In the case of Cartiva, any of 3 reasonable alternative means of defining surgical success would have altered the final outcome of the MOTION trial. Additionally, using a more rigorous noninferiority margin rather than adding an additional cushion based upon the argument that motion alone had extra inherent value would have also led to failure of the trial to demonstrate noninferiority.