On today’s episode, we’re going to continue our discussion with Dr. Elizabeth Matzkin and dive deeper into the surgical management of meniscus tears, specifically focusing on bucket handle meniscus tears and post-surgical rehab.

We’ll start with the article by Aaron Krych and his team at the Mayo Clinic titled Comparative Outcomes of All-Inside Versus Inside-Out Repair of Bucket Handle Meniscal Tears in OJSM. This study found no significant difference in clinical outcomes, retear rate and complications between the two repair techniques. Interestingly, increased age trended towards decreased repair failure rate, attributed to less demand placed on the repair compared to younger patients.

We follow that up with a more recent paper from the December 2020 issue of Arthroscopy, investigating The Biomechanical Performance of the Latest All-Inside Meniscal Repair Devices. This lab study found that hand-tied Orthocord suture repair was the strongest repair construct compared to newer all-inside devices including the AIR, FasT-Fix, and Meniscal Cinch.

We then finished up with a discussion on post-op rehab after meniscus repair with the systematic review article titled Weightbearing versus Nonweightbearing After Meniscus Repair from Sports Health.