Clinically oriented morphometric study of the medial and lateral menisci of the knee joint in South Indian adult cadavers

Objectives It was reported that, if bony fixation of a meniscal substitute should be attempted, the length of the meniscus should be known. In the present study, the aim was to find out the inner and peripheral border lengths of the medial and lateral menisci, to measure the distance between anterior and posterior horns. Methods The menisci from 23 knee joints (46 menisci) of the formalin fixed Indian cadaver lower limbs were used. The peripheral and inner borer lengths of the menisci were measured with a non elastic cotton thread, the distance between the horns was measured with the vernier caliper of 0.02 mm accuracy. Statistical analysis between the sides and tibial plateau compartments were performed by using paired samples t‐test. Two tailed p‐values < 0.05 were considered significant. Results The mean peripheral border lengths of the medial and lateral meniscus were 99.06 ± 11.21 and 90.25 ± 9.36 mms respectively. The inner border lengths were determined as 55.44 ± 8.37 and 50.63 ± 5.33 mms for the medial and lateral menisci. The distances between the anterior and posterior horns were 24.13 ± 4.19 and 11.31 ± 3.86 mms for the same. Conclusions The peripheral length and the inter horn distance of the medial meniscus was more than the lateral, the statistically significance was observed (*p<0.05). The other parameters obtained were statistically not significant. As there is no enough data about this subject in the literature, we believe that data from the present study is useful to the orthopaedic surgeons in case of transplant surgeries. The findings are also enlightening for the anthropologists and clinical anatomists.