Treating A Meniscus Injury

Once your medical professional has diagnosed your condition, they will recommend the most effective treatment for your meniscus injury. They will consider your activity level, age, the location and type of your meniscus injury, as well as when it happened, the symptoms you experience and any other associated knee injuries, when determining whether conservative or surgical treatment options are more appropriate. Conservative treatments are generally recommended for partial, stable and degenerative meniscus tears. Surgical options are used more often for larger, complex or displaced tears.

During your recovery, you will probably have to modify and/or eliminate any activities that cause pain or discomfort in your knee area until your pain and inflammation settle. Scar tissue will often develop as a result of injuries once acute inflammation begins to decrease. As your damaged knee tissues heal this dead, fibrotic tissue will develop instead of forming brand new healthy tissue. This tissue adheres to your muscle fibers, tendons, ligaments, fascia, nerves, and joints causing pain and preventing them from moving properly (this limits your range of motion, flexibility and strength).

Some small meniscus tears have no symptoms at all and may disappear on their own. Other small tears will subside with conservative treatments, especially if your knee is stable and doesn't lock. These tears are often located on the outer edges of your meniscus and have access to a lot of blood supply, which helps them heal quicker (a TShellz^® Circulatory Boost Wrap is very effective in increasing blood supply in this area, view our TShellz Wrap^®page for more details).

You will generally notice great knee improvement within 6 to 12 weeks; however it can take months for you to return to normal. The more diligent you are with your treatment and rehabilitation, the faster you will see successful results. If you start using your knee before it has a chance to heal properly (even though it may feel better), you can end up doing a lot more damage than good!

Younger patients tend to have higher success rates with meniscus injuries than older individuals, as their conditions are generally a result of trauma to healthy tissue rather than degeneration over the years. Individuals with a discoid meniscus will often receive conservative treatments if they experience no major pain. However, surgery is often used if symptoms do not subside as they grow.

The good news is that most minor meniscus injuries will heal with simple home conservative treatments and surgery is often not needed.

Some small meniscus tears have no symptoms at all and may disappear on their own. Other less severe or non-complex tears will subside with conservative treatments, especially if your knee is stable and doesn't lock. These tears are often located on the outer edges of your meniscus.

It is the blood in your body that heals and repairs damage to your tissue. By transporting oxygen and nutrients to the area and flushing away dead tissue, your blood helps your body to heal itself. Unfortunately, when a meniscus injury occurs and you have knee pain, you need to prevent further injury and rest the area to allow it to heal. By resting, you actually limit the flow of blood and this slows down the healing process. The trick to healing a meniscus tear (as long as the tear is in a zone that gets blood flow) is to slow tissue damage, reduce scar tissue, and generate blood flow to speed healing and prevent further damage.

If you suspect you may have a medial meniscus tear injury..

• The first thing to do is speak with your doctor. Only your doctor can give you a proper diagnosis and from this, determine a course of proper treatment. Unless you need surgery to fix your torn medial meniscus, your doctor will almost always recommend conservative treatment options - conservative treatment options for a medial meniscus tear typically means rest, ice the injury, elevate the injury and take anti-inflammatory medication.
• Second, if your doctor has decided that your injury can be treated with conservative treatment options, then you'll find that many of our customers have had great success treating themselves with our powerful home conservative treatment device - the Knee TShellz Wrap^®.
• If surgical intervention is required, talk with your doctor about using the TShellz Wrap^® for post-surgery recovery as you will find it highly effective for enhancing range of motion, stimulating an increase in blood flow and minimizing scar tissue growth.

In most cases, your Doctor will start with non-surgical treatments options. Some of the options your doctor may recommend include anti-inflammatory medication to manage pain and inflammation. Steroid injections are advised with caution for any type of tendon condition as there is increased risk of tendon rupture.
(reference: American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons)

There are risks associated with regular use of a knee brace, especially if the brace you are using is not a custom fitted/design. If you are using a standard or "off the shelf" knee brace then it is possible that the brace is not the right size, positioned incorrectly on your knee, or even causing more damage to your injury. Knee braces can also feel heavy or bulky at first if you are not used to wearing one. It is possible that you may not feel the benefits of wearing a knee brace for a month, or however long it takes for you to feel comfortable wearing your brace. Skin irritation can also occur under the brace depending on the breath-ability of the material you are using for your knee brace and the overall fit. One important thing to be aware of is the amount of restriction you are placing on your knee while wearing a knee brace. Too much restriction in movement for an extended period of time can result in stiffness of your joint, chronic pain, or wasting away of the ligaments, tendons and muscles in your knee and leg.

Before we go further, it's important to understand that your body is capable of healing itself - though it requires the flow of blood to do so. When it comes to meniscus injuries, the inner third of the meniscus (known as "the white zone") really gets little to no blood flow and if you have a meniscus tear in this area, your physician will probably recommend surgery to fix it. This is one of many reasons why you need to see a doctor - only they will know if the tear is "surgically necessary" (SN). A physician will always try to opt for the conservative treatment first - usually, it works although it takes time to heal. If your meniscus tear is outside the white zone, then, with good blood flow in the area, the damaged fibrocartilage will receive oxygen and much needed nutrients while flushing away toxins and waste - otherwise known as healing. Inflammation and reduced movement (lack of activity or on-going immobility) reduces the flow of blood to an area that's already receiving very little blood flow which is why it is important to keep it down. If you are still active with a meniscus tear, you run a risk of increasing the severity of the injury; if there has been some healing, you could re-injure your meniscus all over again and/or easily make it worse.

Blood Flow - the natural healing process in your body - needs assistance for medial meniscus injuries because blood flow is greatly reduced when you're injured. When treating a medial meniscus injury or really any type of meniscus or knee injury (ie. lateral meniscus tear, bucket-handle tear, posterior horn tear, or anterior horn tear), you need to increase blood flow to your injury while your knee is healing. This increase in blood flow will accelerate your body's own ability to heal itself. We believe the Knee TShellz Wrap^® is the most highly effective blood flow stimulation device that is registered with the FDA and available for home use.

If you have a medial meniscus injury, it's very important to heal it quickly and completely. Minimizing the healing time should be an obvious goal, as a chronic medial meniscus tear will limit your ability to go about your daily routine for a long period of time.

A seemingly small, nagging injury in your meniscus that's not properly treated can lead to a chronic painful degenerative medial meniscus tear that can persist for years if not properly treated.

For an outline of Home Treatment Options for Meniscus Injury Rehabilitation, please view our Meniscus Injury Conservative Treatments page.

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During your recovery, you will probably have to modify and/or eliminate any activities that cause pain or discomfort at the location of your soft tissue injury until the pain and inflammation settle. The more diligent you are with your treatment and rehabilitation, the faster you will see successful results!