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The medial meniscus is more vulnerable to injury to due to its intimate attachment to the medial collateral ligament. The moveable lateral meniscus is less prone to tear except when the ACL is injured.
Medial and lateral meniscus have a different role in stabilising the ACL-deficient knee: while the medial meniscus functions as a critical secondary stabilisers of anterior tibial translation under an anterior/posterior load, lateral meniscus appears to be a more important restraint of rotational and dynamic laxity.
A lateral meniscus tear doesn't happen as easily as a medial one, and they tend to heal better when left alone. However, a lateral meniscus tear can take longer to heal after surgery.
What type of meniscus tear is the worst? Bucket-handle meniscus tears are the most serious type of meniscus injury. They often occur alongside a ligament injury. Bucket-handle tears require prompt surgery in order to have the best possible chance of recovery.
If you have a moderate to large tear at the outer edge of the meniscus (red zone), you may want to think about surgery. These kinds of tears tend to heal well after surgery. If you have a tear that spreads from the red zone into the inner two-thirds of the meniscus (called the white zone), your decision is harder.
The amount of pain and first appearance of swelling can give important clues about where and how bad the injury is. Tell your doctor of any recurrent swelling or of your knee repeatedly giving way. A magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scan is often used to diagnose meniscal injuries.
Continuing to walk on the affected leg can aggravate your symptoms, making pain and stiffness worse in as little as a few days. Plus, suffering a torn meniscus may also increase your risk of complications, like developing osteoarthritis in that knee.
A horizontal meniscus tear is one of the easiest types of tears to repair in the knee. Rather than removing the portion of the meniscus that is damaged, the surgeon will try to sew together the circumferential fibers of the meniscus back together.
Do all meniscus tears hurt? Yes, at some point in time most all meniscus tears will hurt. But that doesn't mean they will hurt for a long time. In many cases the pain from a meniscus tear will either improve significantly or go away without surgery.
Left untreated, a meniscus tear can limit your daily life and ability to participate in exercise and sports. In serious cases, it can develop into long-term knee problems, like arthritis.
Medial meniscal root tears are associated with poor subjective knee function (24), and a relatively high proportion of these patients (31 %) require a knee replacement within five years (35), emphasising that medial root tears are part of a general degenerative process.
Although the medial compartment sustains more weight-bearing stress [7–9], the lateral meniscus (LM) covers a greater percentage of the area of its compartment than the medial meniscus [7].
Using non-operative treatments, recovery can take six to eight weeks. If you require surgery, recovery can take up to three months for a repair and roughly three to four weeks for a meniscectomy.
“Most meniscus tears are not repairable because of the pattern of the tear. Only the outer third of the meniscus has a blood supply and will heal reliably,” said Joshua J. Christensen, M.D., orthopedic surgeon with Norton Orthopedic Institute.
Knee braces are recommended for those with meniscus tears or OA as they help reduce stress on the joints which knee sleeves don't. Knee braces are used for sports injuries to protect against further damage and provide stability when exercising.
Recovery will take about 6 to 8 weeks if your meniscus tear is treated conservatively, without surgery. If your symptoms persist after 3 months or your symptoms become significant, your doctor may recommend surgery to repair the tear.
Some exercises are too strenuous for people with meniscus tears. A person should not: do deep squats. do any exercise that involves pivoting or that otherwise twists the knee.
While there is ongoing controversy about whether surgery is superior to conservative care, the general consensus is that acute traumatic meniscus tears should be treated surgically, followed by physical therapy and rehab, while conservative treatment should be the first line of care for degenerative meniscus lesions.
Most meniscal tears improve with time and physiotherapy. Physiotherapy will include load modification e.g. reducing your running and walking and reduction or avoidance of the movements and activities that make your pain or swelling worse. This advice will also be accompanied with a comprehensive exercise programme.
Rest: Keep your weight off the injured knee as much as possible. Ice: Place an ice pack on your knee for about 20 minutes, several times a day. Compression: Wrap your knee with a compression bandage to help reduce swelling. Elevation: Rest with your leg raised higher than your heart to decrease swelling.
If a meniscus tear is considered appropriate for an attempt at repair, a number of techniques can be used. The surgery is primarily arthroscopic (minimally invasive) although additional small incisions, or cuts, may be necessary to perform the repair. A variety of devices or sutures can be used to perform a repair.
It has also been shown that a knee that has undergone meniscus surgery has weaker thigh muscles and poorer quality of cartilage 4 years after the surgery [3]. This is also thought to increase the risk of arthritis.