Meniscal transplantation in the football player

Abstract

Introduction: Sport activity after meniscal allograft transplantation (MAT) still represents a controversial topic even among knee experts. The major discordance between the authors is whether patients are able to return to pre-injury levels of sports activity, and wether a return to a high impact sport will result in a higher rate of graft failure compared to a low-impact activity. Objectives: The aim of this narrative review is to evaluate the results of MAT in football players. Methods: In this narrative review we report the data of the literature regarding the return to sport after MAT, with a special focus on football players. Results: At the moment, there is still a lack of high-level clinical data to evaluate the long-term results of MAT. Moreover, only few papers specifically evaluate results of meniscal allograft transplantation in football players. Conclusions: The main finding of this narrative review is that the results of MAT in young active patients are good indeed, with a high number of patients going back to their previous level of sport activity. But this requires a long period of rehabilitation and consequently a long period of stop from the official training. Age is considered a bad prognostic factor, with worse results as age increases. Treatment choice must be discussed by the surgeon and patients together, thus the surgeons must also take in consideration that professional athletes have a high motivation to go back to sports. Shared rehabilitation protocols could help to standardize the return to sport of these active patients.

Keywords

• Meniscal allograft transplantation
• Return to sport
• Knee injuries
• Meniscus
• Footbal