Alexander Konigsberg - General Surgery
Any athlete who has played a contact sport has worried about knee injuries. Most
people’s minds go straight to tearing your ACL, which is probably the most talked about, but the most common knee injury in athletes is a tear of the meniscus. The meniscus is made up of cartilage and acts like a shock absorber for your knee. It is between the femur and the tibia, the shinbone. There are many different kinds of tears, but they occur with a strong twisting of the knee, like getting tackled or making a hard cut. There are actually two sides to the meniscus, the lateral and the medial. The lateral meniscus is on the outside of the knee, and the medial meniscus is on the inner side. A systematic review of existing literature on treatment for a torn meniscus looks at tears on both sides of the meniscus and compares and contrasts a full surgical repair, called a meniscectomy with a meniscal repair/suture. The study found that for athletes looking to return quickly, a meniscectomy will result in a quicker time to return, but has a higher risk of osteoarthritis developing. The study also found that the more conservative repair is even more recommended for the lateral, or outside because it can heal quicker.
Athletes, especially high-level athletes, usually want to get back to their sport as quickly
as possible. However, the repair needs to be effective and athletes need to understand how to balance treatment and a healthy life. For anyone who is not an athlete, these recommendations can influence you to choose a treatment with a longer return time but better outcomes. Surgical advances are constantly happening, but it is important to look back and study whether a less extreme treatment may be better in the long run.
References:
D'Ambrosi R, Meena A, Raj A, et al. In elite athletes with meniscal injuries, always repair the lateral, think about the medial! A systematic review. Knee Surg Sports Traumatol Arthrosc. 2023;31(6):2500-2510. doi:10.1007/s00167-022-07208-8
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