June 21, 2023 – A second-generation "all-inside" meniscal repair system provides a high success rate at long-term follow-up, reports a study in The Journal of Bone & Joint Surgery. The journal is published in the Lippincott portfolio in partnership with Wolters Kluwer.
"Our 10-year results of second-generation, all-inside repair were better than those of first-generation implants and equivalent to those seen with the other common techniques," according to the new research, led by Rick W. Wright, MD, of Vanderbilt University Medical Center, Nashville.
Long-term follow-up after meniscal repair using FasT-Fix system
For patients with meniscal tears in the knee joint, treatment focuses on repairing and preserving the damaged meniscus whenever possible. All-inside meniscal repair techniques were developed as an alternative to previous arthroscopic "inside-out" techniques.
Subsequent second-generation all-inside repair devices brought further advances, quickly becoming the most common approach to meniscal repair. Previous reports suggest similar five-year outcomes with inside-out and current all-inside techniques, with failure rates of 14.2% and 15.8%, respectively.
However, few studies have presented 10-year follow-up data on the outcomes of second-generation all-inside techniques. "We hypothesized that all-inside repairs that have demonstrated good results at five years would maintain their reasonable outcomes beyond 10 years and remain equally successful compared with inside-out repairs," Dr. Wright and colleagues write.
The researchers analyzed the long-term outcomes of patients undergoing meniscal repair using the second-generation FasT-Fix system from 2002 through 2008. All patients underwent primary repair of a torn meniscus in conjunction with anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) reconstruction.
Of 81 treated patients, 69 were available for follow-up at 10 years postoperatively, including 40 male and 29 female patients with an average age of 26.5 years. The medial meniscus was repaired in 73% of patients and the lateral meniscus in 27%. The main outcome of interest was the successful repair rate, defined as not undergoing subsequent surgery related to the meniscus during follow-up.
10-year success rates of 84% to 88%
