# Favorable clinical outcomes are achieved in both male and female following medial meniscus posterior root repair

## TL;DR

This study shows that medial meniscus posterior root repair leads to improved clinical outcomes in both men and women, despite differences in physical characteristics.

## Contribution

The study is the first to compare postoperative outcomes of medial meniscus posterior root repair between male and female patients.

## Key findings

- Clinical scores significantly improved in both male and female patients after 2 years.
- Male patients showed better scores in KOOS-symptom, KOOS-QOL, and Tegner activity scores.
- The repair technique was found to be universally effective regardless of sex-related morphological differences.

## Abstract

In recent years, medial meniscus (MM) posterior root tears (PRT) have received increasing attention due to their association with rapidly progressive knee osteoarthritis. MM posterior root (PR) repair has been reported to yield good clinical outcomes, but no study has yet to compare the postoperative outcomes after MMPR repair between sexes. The purpose of this study is evaluating the postoperative clinical outcomes following MMPR pullout repair by sex.

Eighty-six patients who underwent pullout repair for isolated MMPRTs at our institution between October 2016 and November 2019 were evaluated. Patients were divided into two groups according to sex, and their clinical outcomes were compared preoperatively and at 2 years postoperatively.

The cohort was comprised of 21 male and 65 female patients. Three factors related to physical status (height (p < 0.01), body weight (p < 0.01), and BMI (p = 0.02)) were significantly higher in male patients. No significant differences were observed in preoperative clinical scores between male and female. All clinical scores significantly improved at 2 years postoperatively in both sexes. In the clinical scores, the KOOS-symptom (p = 0.03), KOOS-QOL (p = 0.03), and Tegner activity scores (p < 0.01) showed significantly better scores in male patients.

Following MMPR pullout repair, the clinical outcomes significantly improved in both sexes. These results indicate that MMPR pullout repair is a universally effective technique regardless of the disadvantages of females in morphological characteristics.

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s00590-025-04344-y.