All-Inside Meniscal Repair Effective in Long Term

FRIDAY, Aug. 4, 2023 (HealthDay News) -- All-inside meniscal repair is relatively successful when performed with concurrent anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) reconstruction, according to a study published in the June 21 issue of the Journal of Bone & Joint Surgery.

Rick W. Wright, M.D., from the Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, Tennessee, and colleagues conducted a retrospective review of prospectively collected patients who underwent meniscal repair by a single surgeon using the all-inside FAST-FIX Meniscal Repair System with concurrent ACL reconstruction. Eighty-one patients with 81 meniscal repairs were identified: 59 and 22 medial and lateral repairs, respectively. For 85 percent of the patients, 10-year follow-up data were obtained.

The researchers found that 13 percent of the patients underwent a failed meniscal repair (six medial, three lateral), corresponding to a failure rate of 12 and 16 percent for medial and lateral repairs, respectively. The mean time to failure was 2.8 years for medial repairs and 5.8 years for lateral repairs. For successful repairs and failures, no difference was seen in mean patient age, sex, body mass index, graft type, or number of sutures utilized. Significant improvement was seen in postoperative Knee injury and Osteoarthritis Outcome Scores and International Knee Documentation Committee outcome scores over baseline scores. For successful and failed repairs, no significant difference was seen in patient-reported outcomes at 10 years.

"This study of long-term follow-up results of primary, second-generation, all-inside meniscal repair demonstrates its effectiveness when it is performed with concurrent ACL reconstruction," the authors write.

One author disclosed financial ties to industry.

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