Functional outcome of arthroscopic repair of bucket handle and longitudinal medial meniscal tears in a military population by inside out and outside in technique: A prospective observational study.

Abstract

ObjectiveTo assess if young military personnel who had sustained medial meniscal bucket handle/longitudinal tears could return to full, unrestricted active duty after meniscal repair by outside in/inside out technique. Methods32 medial meniscal longitudinal/bucket handle tears were repaired by inside-out and outside in technique between Jul 01, 2017 and June 30, 2018 and followed up for at least 18 months. ResultsThere were 03 failures of repair. The first 05 patients developed para-meniscal cyst due to irritation of soft tissue by PROLENE® suture hence the suture material was changed to ULTRABRAID® in next 27 patients and there was no occurrence of this complication. The mean IKDC, Lysholm and Tegner scores showed significant improvement till 12 months post op and thereafter there was marginal improvement in these scores. Most patients who had successful outcome at one year were able to carry out preinjury level of activities and join unrestricted active duty. ConclusionWith more than 90% able to re-join active duty, we could demonstrate that inside out/outside in technique is an excellent method of reliably and economically repairing a torn meniscus even for very high demand military personnel.