From the article:

A 2014 review of 53 trials that compared elective surgical procedures to placebos found that sham surgeries provided some benefit in 74 percent of the trials and worked as well as the real deal in about half.1 Consider the middle-aged guy going in for surgery to treat his knee pain. Arthroscopic knee surgery has been a common orthopedic procedure in the United States, with about 692,000 of them performed in 2010,2 but the procedure has proven no better than a sham when done to address degenerative wear and tear, particularly on the meniscus.3

This is perfectly timed for me: I just had surgery Friday to reattach my biceps tendon. The bandage comes off today. Of course it won’t work right away, so now I will wonder if I needed it. But at least now, outside the bandage, the muscle is back where it is supposed to be.

I did tear a meniscus and MCL a couple of years ago and the surgeon just shrugged and said “these things usually heal on their own — want to wait and see?” So perhaps these studies have had an effect.

You probably had a biceps tendon rupture rather than a tear. MCL can be compensated by other ligaments and the meniscus is more for cushioning so some tissue can fix small tears.

That being said surgeons gonna surgery.

Yep, it was a tendon rupture, which was momentarily confusing to me: in English “rupture” has taken on the meaning of “to burst” (like a seed pod) while the term is used here in its original Latin sense (break). It’s been a few decades since I was in high school!

I was shocked how well I could do without a functioning biceps — seems like my triceps does most of the work. Since I had no or negligible pain (unlike the knee) I briefly considered just living with it broken. Unfortunately there are several things I would like to use it for, including the one that broke it. So we’ll see what happens.

Whilst many Orthopedic Surgeries may very well have little to no benefit, it should be noted;

>he’ll participate in — fasting, wearing a hospital gown, undergoing >anesthesia<

We have already seen many papers on the effects, and after effects of Ketamine - a common hospital anesthetic.