Purpose: This study was undertaken to diagnose and to document clinical results and the technical aspects of arthroscopic meniscus repair for treating the recurrent subluxation with peripheral tears around popliteal hiatus of the LM.
Methods: Twenty three patients (24 knees) with symptomatic recurrent subluxation of the LM treated by arthroscopic meniscus repair were included. The inclusion criteria were (1) patients with knee pain, locking or snapping symptoms despite 3 months of conservative treatment, (2) non-discoid lateral meniscus, (3) stable knee, and (4) tears involving the red-white or red–red zone. All tears were repaired with either the modified all-inside suture technique only or a combination of the modified all-inside …show more content…
The lateral meniscus (LM) is circular in shape, smaller in radius, thicker in periphery, and more mobile than those of the medial meniscus (MM) because it only has loose attachment to the capsule, which is interrupted by the popliteal hiatus.[22] Although the posterior horn of the LM is more susceptible to subluxation than MM, studies about subluxation of LM were reported less than those of MM.[10, 11, 18, 28] Displaced LMs are easily and spontaneously reduced, and these reduced lesions are only characterized by a history of lateral knee pain, intermittent locking symptoms or snapping knee when sudden standing up without definite tear signs on MRI; thus, this kind of tear is difficult to demonstrate by MRI.[8, 18, 21, 26] Numerous papers have published with different nomenclature such as recurrent subluxation of the LM, a popliteomeniscal fascicle tear, a hypermobile posterior horn of LM, and a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) negative bucket handle tear of the LM.[4, 10, 11, 13, 16-19, 23] Furthermore, diagnosis of the hypermobility of the LM without subluxation could be more difficult without thorough understanding of LM and high clinical suspicion of hypermobility even during an arthroscopic examination because tears of popliteomeniscal fascicle are rare and shrouded in the parameniscal region.[16, 18, 19,