Background: Meniscus tears are a common cause of knee pain encountered in orthopedics and sports medicine. There are numerous management strategies, from physical therapy and oral medications to surgery. Recent evidence is more favorable for conservative management, as operative treatment has limited clinical benefits and is associated with an accelerated progression toward osteoarthritis. Injections with orthobiologic therapies, such as platelet-rich plasma (PRP), are emerging as an alternative therapeutic tool for degenerative tears. This study aims to evaluate the latest evidence regarding the efficacy of PRP injections for the nonoperative management of degenerative meniscal pathology.
Data sources: Articles were obtained from Embase, PubMed, World of Science, Cochrane, and Galileo databases after searching "Platelet-rich plasma" AND "Meniscus." Inclusion criteria consisted of original, human studies evaluating the use of platelet-rich plasma for nonoperative management of meniscus tears.
Main results: A total of 384 articles were screened, with ten studies selected for final inclusion. The pooled study population comprised 686 patients, with an average age ranging from 33 to 53 years, and a 38% female population. Three different injection approaches were utilized, categorized as intra-articular alone (IA), intra-meniscal alone (IM), or a combination of both. Most studies demonstrated improved pain and functionality by 3 months that persisted for at least one year. Within the IA and IM groups, the majority of patients were either radiographically stable (30-70%) or demonstrated interval healing (40-60%). Several studies within IM and combined treatment groups evaluated rates and time to arthroscopy, and found lower failure rates and greater arthroscopy-free survival time than control comparison groups.
Conclusion: PRP appears to be a safe and efficacious treatment strategy for degenerative meniscal pathology. However, due to diverse periprocedural techniques, PRP injectate characteristics, and a lack of high-quality studies, additional trials are needed to provide greater a degree of confidence in PRP's clinical impact on patients with meniscus tears.
Level of evidence: Systematic Review.
Keywords: Meniscus degeneration; Meniscus tears; Non-operative; Orthobiologics; PRP; Platelet-rich plasma; Regenerative medicine.
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