Clinical outcomes after arthroscopic repair of knee meniscal radial tears: a case series

Background: A clinical trial to assess short term functional outcomes after arthroscopic meniscal repair of radial tears in adult patients. Methods: We recruited fifteen adult patients with radial knee meniscal tears. We did meniscal repair with two horizontal sutures with either all-inside or out-side in techniques. Post-operatively, We assessed pain, range of motion (ROM), International Knee Documentation Committee (IKDC) 2000 score, Lysholm, score. Results: Our series included fifteen patients with mean age of 31.36 yrs with radial meniscal tears who underwent arthroscopic repair either with outside in or all-inside technique. The mean time from injury to surgery was two months. The mean follow up period was 19.5 mos. The cohort included 9 patients with medial meniscus injury and 6 patients with lateral meniscus injury. Eight patients with posterior horn injuries and seven patients with body of the meniscus injuries. All patients had injuries reaching the red-red zone. All patients had full range of motion (ROM) preoperatively except two patients. We augmented the repair with fibrin clots in three patients. We assessed IKDC and Lysholm score six months and eighteen months following surgery. We found statistically significant improvement in fourteen patients in both IKDC and lysholm score and the mean difference of both scores measured 41.8 and 36.1 respectively. Our subgroup analysis revealed no statistically significant difference in clinical outcomes between neither the medial and lateral meniscal injuries nor the isolated injuries and concomitant ACL injuries. Conclusions: Patients who underwent arthroscopic repair of radial meniscal tears showed improved functional knee outcomes.