Arthrography and Arthroscopy for Meniscal Lesions of the Knees

You, Myung Chul; Ahn, Jin Whan; Jo, Eun Je

Abstract

We assessed the accuracy of clinical evaluation, arthrography, and arthroscopy in the diagnosis of meniscal lesions in twenty-nine knees in which arthrotomy and menisectomy were performed after evaluation by these three methods, At surgery, thirty menisci of twenty-nine knees were removed, of which twenty-eight were abnormal and two were normal. In these thirty menisci, a correct diagnosis was made clinically eighteen times, arthrographically twenty times, and arthroscopically twenty-seven times. Posterior horn tears of medial meniscus and discoid lateral meniscus were well visualized but lateral meniscal tears were poorly visualized on arthrogram. The errors of arthroscopy occurred in two tears confined to outer one half of medial menscal posterior horn, and in a normal meniscus as false positive. Based on this study, it was concluded that both the arthrography and arthroscopy are valuable techniques for the diagnosis of meniscal lesions, and that we can expect correct diagnosis of all the meniscal lesions by the use of complementary roles of the two and by the experiences.