Injuries to the Medial Meniscus in the Aging Patient

Abstract

TRAUMATIC internal derangement of the knee is generally associated with the young male athlete or laborer. It has long been felt that this condition was not prone to occur in the aging and that symptoms in the older patient were invariably due to the simultaneous presence of osteoarthritic changes, generally demonstrable by x-ray when these patients appear for evaluation. Furthermore, many orthopedic surgeons, suspecting traumatic derangements in aging patients, have denied them surgical treatment with the opinion that the results were unpredictable and the morbidity high. Recently, it has been emphasized that the elderly patient can also have attritional meniscus ruptures secondary to the osteoarthritis with typical signs and symptoms of derangement.1 It is the authors' purpose to illustrate that traumatic internal derangements of the knee are not uncommon in the aging, are clinically similar to derangements found in younger patients, and with minor modifications in surgical technique, can