Disclosures: Erica Blanchard: No financial relationships or conflicts of interest

Objective: To evaluate the return to play rate and time to return to play for athletes with isolated meniscal injuries through systematic review.

Design: Systematic Review, Level IV Setting : Rothman Orthopedics Participants : Any patients in articles that met inclusion criteria

Interventions: None

Main Outcome Measures: PubMed, EMBASE, and Cochrane electronic databases were searched. Studies were excluded if there was a concomitant ACL reconstruction, meniscectomy instead of meniscal repair, or if the study was a systematic review. Quality assessment and data extraction were performed by two examiners. Outcome were measured with return to sport rate, surgical techniques performed, subjective outcome scores, complications from surgery, and revision surgeries performed.

Results: Twenty-one studies met the inclusion criteria and were included in this review. There were 355 athletes (358 knees) with an average age of 22.5 years (range, 9–68 years). A gender breakdown was noted in 16 of the 21 (76.2%) studies with 224 males and 71 females. The specific repair technique was described in 259 (72.3%) knees. Of the total knees, 109 (30.4%) had an open repair, 128 (35.6%) had an inside-out arthroscopic technique repair, and 22 (6.1%) had an all-inside arthroscopic technique repair. Complications were addressed in 11 studies with 13 out of 155 (8.4%) patients across the 11 articles having a post-operative complication. Of the total 355 patients, 295 (83.1%) returned to play, and 17 of these 21 (81.0%) articles reported the time it took for athletes to return to sports with an average return of 8.7 months. Conclusions: The results of our study indicate that return to play rates following isolated meniscal repair are high with an overall return to play rate of 83.1% and an average return to play time of 8.7 months. However, the limited number of studies, particularly ones with larger patient numbers, highlights the need for further investigation regarding isolated meniscal repair in athletes.

Level of Evidence: Level IV

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PM&R Meeting Abstracts - https://pmrjabstracts.org/abstract/return-to-play-after-isolated-meniscal-repairs-in-athletes-a-systematic-review/