“Meniscus tears are one of the most common knee injuries. Surgeons remove the meniscus in about 28,000 kids ages 9 to 19 every year, because they always thought they couldn’t be repaired,” says Frank Noyes, MD, president and medical director of Cincinnati Sports medicine and Orthopaedic Center. More from Prevention: 3 Workouts That Build Strong Knees Using an arthroscopic technique, surgeons can now place fine sutures along the tear and secure the cartilage to its natural bed, saving the meniscus. Dr. Noyes pioneered and studied this technique on 61 children and adolescents over a 14 year period. Four years after surgery, about 80 percent of them were pain-free. He presented his findings in March 2001 at the annual meeting of the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons. “It may work on older knees too,” says Dr. Noyes. “If a 40- or 50-year-old has fairly healthy cartilage, we can repair it, and it will heal like it would in a younger person.” Ultimately, he would like painful knees to become medical history. “I hope that in 5 years, a surgeon will never remove a meniscus. He’ll put a new scaffold in the injured knee, inject it with fresh cells and growth factors, and you’ll produce new protective cartilage.”
