Introduction: Meniscal damage is a common pathology in the knee joint. In principle there are two main types of such injuries, traumatic and degenerative. In most cases degenerative lesions have a more complex pathology and occur primarily in older adults. Their management can be either surgical, usually with arthroscopic partial meniscectomy, or conservative with physical therapy and/or pharmacological treatment. Benefits of both treatment methods can be found in the literature, however they are mainly short-term studies that lack further reports on the results. Purpose: The purpose of the diploma work is to review and analyze the findings of the long-term results of the surgical and conservative management of degenerative meniscus lesions. Methods: The literature search was carried out in databases Pubmed and CINAHL with selected keywords. The review included prospective randomized studies, carried out within the last five years. Results: There were five studies included in the literature review that compared the long-term results of surgical and conservative management of degenerative meniscal lesions. Four of them compared arthroscopic partial meniscectomy to conservative treatment with physical therapy, whereas one compared it to placebo surgery. The outcome measurements were pain, function, muscle strength, osteoarthritis development, quality of life and patient satisfaction. At the five year follow-up there were no statistically significant differences beetween the two groups in most of the variables. Discussion and conclusion: Based on these results we can assume that surgical treatment of degenerative meniscal injuries is not superior in long-term compared to conservative treatment. Because of the relatively small number of studies included in the litereture review it is difficult to conclude which treatment method is the optimal one. Further research in this area, with a longer follow-up period (10, 15 years) is needed to define this definitvely.
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