Proprioception of knee joints with a lesion of the medial meniscus

We assessed knee-joint proprioception in 23 patients with an isolated lesion of the medial meniscus. Thirteen patients were tested prior to their arthroscopic operation, and 10 patients were examined after partial arthroscopic resection of the injured meniscus. As a control group we evaluated 30 healthy volunteers with clinically normal knee joints. For documentation of the proprioceptive capabilities we performed a special angle reproduction test which was described in the literature. Additionally the subjects were tested with and without a knee bandage, to test its influence on knee-joint proprioception. Our results showed that preoperatively a significant deterioration in proprioception was present compared with the control group. We could not find any influence of the knee bandage on the proprioception of the injured knee. The postoperative group of patients showed a significantly better proprioceptive capability compared to the preoperative patients. The postoperative results also did not show any significant difference as compared to those of the control group.