Summary
Age, Gender, Side of surgery, were not significant factors for meniscal repair failure. The overall rate of successful healing of meniscal repairs was 92%. Lateral meniscal repairs fared better than medial meniscal repairs. Concomitant anterior cruciate ligament reconstruction did not have an impact on meniscal repair failure rates.
Purpose
To determine the outcome of all inside arthroscopic meniscal repairs versus arthroscopic meniscal repairs with concomitant arthroscopic assisted anterior cruciate ligament reconstruction.
Methods
A retrospective review of 117 consecutive ‘all inside’ arthroscopic meniscal repairs using a single suture technique from 1993 to 2006 by a single surgeon identified 53 isolated repairs and 64 in combination with ACL reconstruction. All tears were 2 cm or greater. Age averaged 30 years (range: 13-65). Outcomes of age, gender, and medial vs. lateral sidedness were also studied. Meniscal repair failure was defined as recurrence of pain at the repair site.
Results
At an average follow-up of 38 months, there were 9 failures (7.7%). The average time to failure was 24 months (range: 3-108), with 6 requiring surgical intervention. Three failed in the ACL group (4.6%) and 6 in the non ACL group (12.9%), with no statistical difference between the two groups (p=0.12). Medial tears were more prevalent than lateral tears, 74% versus 26%. All repair failures were medial. Age greater than 40 was not significant for failure (p=0.26). Side and gender were also not statistically significant (p=0.22 and p=0.23, respectively).
Conclusions
In this study, age, gender, ‘sidedness’, were not significant factors for meniscal repair failure. The overall rate of successful healing of meniscal repairs was 92%. Lateral meniscal repairs fared better than medial meniscal repairs. Age and concomitant anterior cruciate ligament reconstruction had no impact on outcome.
Article info
Identification
Copyright
© 2007 Arthroscopy Association of North America. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
