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Morphological structure and variations of fetal lateral meniscus: the significance in convenient diagnosis and treatment

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Knee Surgery, Sports Traumatology, Arthroscopy Aims and scope

Abstract

Purpose

The aim of this study is to evaluate of morphometry of the lateral meniscus (LM) and determine incidence of the LM shapes.

Methods

This study was performed on fetal cadaver collection of Anatomy Department of Necmettin Erbakan University. Fifty human fetal cadavers (25 female, 25 male human fetal cadavers) were used in this study. Microdissection was performed. Morphometric measurements were performed. LM were classified into four types and five subtypes.

Results

In this study, it was identified that all parameters which were measured were found to be increased with gestational ages. Four morphological types and five morphological subtypes were determined. It was found that 12% of the LM were crescent-shaped, 66% of the LM were C-shaped, 14% of the LM were incomplete-disc-shaped, 2% of the LM were disc-shaped, 6% of the LM were variant C-shaped.

Conclusions

A few studies on fetal meniscal anatomy and its development were performed. Each new study is important for having detailed anatomy and development of the fetal menisci which will have both clinical and anatomical impacts during childhood and adulthood for orthopedic surgeons and anatomists, respectively. The most important results of this study were the detailed objective analysis of the macroscopic fetal growth of LM. It was significantly observed that four morphological types and five morphological subtypes of LM. The results of the present study related with both the observation of morphological development of the fetal meniscal anatomy, and its morphological variants, are important in terms of improving our knowledge, and clinical approach on the description, and the management of the symptomatic lateral discoid meniscus tears in children, adolescents, and adults. The clinical relevance of this study was that this classification of fetal menisci could ameliorate our current understanding of the morphology of lateral meniscus in adult, further.

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Acknowledgements

We thank the fetal cadaver donors for contribution to study.

Funding

The authors have no affiliation with any organization with a direct or indirect financial interest in the subject matter discussed in the manuscript.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Anatomy, Meram Faculty of Medicine, University of Necmettin Erbakan, Meram, 42080, Konya, Turkey

    Anıl Didem Aydın Kabakçı, Mustafa Büyükmumcu & Duygu Akın

  2. Department of Orthopaedics and Traumatology, Meram Faculty of Medicine, University of Necmettin Erbakan, Konya, Turkey

    Onur Bilge

  3. Department of Sports Medicine, Meram Faculty of Medicine, University of Necmettin Erbakan, Konya, Turkey

    Onur Bilge

Authors
  1. Anıl Didem Aydın Kabakçı
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  2. Mustafa Büyükmumcu
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  3. Duygu Akın
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  4. Onur Bilge
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Contributions

All authors have participated in conception and design, or analysis and interpretation of the data; drafting the article or revising it critically for important intellectual content; and approval of the final version.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Anıl Didem Aydın Kabakçı.

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Conflict of interest

The research was not sponsored by an outside organization. We (all of the authors) have agreed to allow full access to the primary data and to allow the journal to review the data if requested. There is no conflict of interest between the authors and this manuscript has not been submitted to, nor is under review at, another journal or other publishing venue.

Ethical review committee statement

This study conformed to the Helsinki Declaration.

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Aydın Kabakçı, A.D., Büyükmumcu, M., Akın, D. et al. Morphological structure and variations of fetal lateral meniscus: the significance in convenient diagnosis and treatment. Knee Surg Sports Traumatol Arthrosc 27, 3364–3373 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00167-019-05352-2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00167-019-05352-2

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