Description
Purpose: This study investigated the detailed clinical features including injury mechanisms of surgically treated isolated meniscal injuries among young athletes, aiming to identify patterns that could inform knee injury management. A sub-analysis was focused on understanding the risk factor for specific tear patterns, such as radial tears in the middle segment of the lateral meniscus.
Methods: This study analyzed 206 young athletes aged <30 years who underwent arthroscopic surgery for primary isolated meniscal injuries from 6,697 patients treated between January 2007 and December 2022. The study emphasized categorizing injuries according to meniscus type, such as medial meniscus (MM), semilunar lateral meniscus (SLM), and DLM, tear type and location, injury mechanism, sport genre, and specific characteristics of tears.
Results: Lateral meniscal injuries were dominant (n = 155, 75.2%), and vertical tears, including the posterior segment in the red–red zone, were the most frequent pattern (n = 109, 52.9%). The DLM group occupied 65 cases (31.6%) in the whole study population and further accounting for approximately half (43.6%) of all lateral meniscal injuries. Noncontact mechanisms dominantly occupied 169 cases (82.0%). Soccer was the most frequent sport genre (n = 56, 27.1%) and the kicking motion was the unique and major (n = 24) injury mechanism. All the 15 tears in the MM presented vertical tears in the red–red zone of the anterior–middle segment. Thirty patients (14.6%) had radial tears in the middle segment of the lateral meniscus and incomplete DLM was the strongest risk factor (odds ratio, 3.883, versus complete DLM; 7.330, versus SLM).
Conclusion: In the investigation of isolated meniscal injuries during sports activities among young athletes, specific trends were detected, such as peripheral vertical tears in the anterior–middle segment of the MM caused by kicking motion in soccer, and radial tears in the middle segment of the lateral meniscus frequently associated with incomplete DLM. This knowledge could be clinically useful for knee injury management in sports medicine.
