Outside in and all inside approach for repair of meniscal tears: post-operative subjective evaluation: a retrospective study

Abstract

Background: Assess clinical outcomes after using outside-in, all-inside or combination of both approaches for meniscal repair.

Methods: 86 patients with diagnosed meniscal tears, operated between January 2017 and January 2019 by one surgeon in Northway Clinic, Vilnius and Vilnius Clinical Hospital were surveyed. The meniscal repair techniques used included all-inside, outside-in, or a combination. Clinical outcomes were evaluated using the International Knee Documentation Committee Subjective Knee Evaluation Form, with meniscal retear indicating failure. Ethical approval was deemed unnecessary for this project. Descriptive statistical analyses were performed using IBM SPSS Statistics 29.01.

Results: Patients undergoing the outside-in approach scored 89.4±12.5 on the IKDC questionnaire, compared to 88.5±16.6 for all-inside and 82.8±20.3 for both techniques combined (p=0.194). Kaplan–Meier analysis showed a 5.6-year survival rate of 80.9% with the all-inside approach. Subjective knee function assessment indicated scores of 8.50±1.9 for outside-in, 8.49±1.4 for all-inside, and 8.16±1.95 for both techniques. Cox proportional hazards model analysis suggested that older age and higher BMI trended towards reduced reoperation risk (hazard ratio, 0.93 and 0.98; p=0.246 and p=0.832, respectively).

Conclusions: Self-reported outcomes in this study evaluated by IKDC questionnaire and subjective function assessment emphasize that both all-inside, outside-in or combination of the techniques provide similar results. All adverse outcomes defined as meniscal retears were observed using all-inside technique.