Knee kinematics during gait in patients with discoid lateral meniscus: a systematic review

The aim of this study was to evaluate the difference between symptomatic discoid lateral meniscus (DLM) and healthy knees in terms of gait analysis.

A systematic review was conducted from the electronic databases PubMed/MEDLINE, EMBASE and Scopus. The review was performed on studies that reported data on kinematics, gait analysis, biomechanics in discoid lateral meniscus, before and after surgery.

Out of 127 identified items, six full-text articles were assessed for eligibility. Three of these studies were included in the quantitative synthesis. Those studies reported a significantly slower gait speed and shorter stride length, smaller excursion during weight acceptance and mid-stance phases and during the whole gait cycle, smaller maximum flexion angle in swing phase, lower frontal excursion, smaller axial excursion in the DLM groups compared to the control groups. One study reported a significative increase in the walking speed and in the stride length, increase both in the maximum knee flexion angle during stance phase and swing phase, and in the range of flexion-extension after arthroscopic surgical treatment for symptomatic DLM.

Literature about gait analysis on DLM patients is still very scarce and heterogeneous. The few studies on this topic show a different gait pattern between DLM knees and healthy knees and are encouraging about the surgical outcomes of DLM in terms of gait. Larger and standardized studies should be designed to assess a more suitable number of subjects with DLM.