Arthroscopic review of meniscal repair: assessment of healing parameters

The purpose of this study was to demonstrate what can be learned by repeat arthroscopy of meniscal repairs with regard to documenting healing, determining reasons for failure to heal, and discovering the fate of nonabsorbable suture material. The study involved 14 patients with 16 repairs who had repeat arthroscopy an average of 7.5 months after repair. Nonabsorbable suture was used in 14 of the repairs. Eleven repairs were done arthroscopically, and five were open. Charts and videotapes of both procedures were reviewed. Results showed 56% of repairs had healed, 25% had partially healed, and 13% had not healed. This is unusually slanted toward bad results for meniscal repair because the knees were usually rearthroscoped due to continued or recurrent problems. Most of the approximately 200 original patients were not symptomatic enough to warrant or submit to rearthroscopy. No damage to articular surfaces was found due to use of nonabsorbable sutures. These sutures become completely or partially incorporated into the meniscus. Meniscal repairs at risk for healing problems were set apart by an analysis of those cases with healing problems, including repairs of multiple longitudinal tears, tears greater than 40 mm in length, and tears in unstable knees. It should be emphasized that these conclusions only suggest a trend. Numbers are too few for statistical significance.