Study Begins on Meniscus Tears

The first patient has been enrolled in a study called STITCH to evaluate a suture-based meniscal repair for patients with horizontal meniscus tears. This is a common type of knee injury. The study is being conducted by Ceterix Orthopaedics, Inc. of Menlo Park, California.

Patients with horizontal cleavage tears often undergo the partial removal of the meniscus (meniscectomy) because doctors have believed that meniscus repair is not effective for this tear type.

“Since the early days of meniscal repair surgery, it has been often repeated, on the podium and in and publications, that horizontal cleavage tears cannot be repaired due to their degenerative nature, ” said orthopedic surgeon Peter Kurzweil, M.D., principal investigator of the STITCH study. “This study is designed to further investigate whether these types of tears can indeed heal, as the literature review suggests, when repaired with suture-based therapy.”

According to the company’s press release, a recently published systemic literature review shows that healing rates for horizontal cleavage tears are comparable to other meniscal tear types that are routinely repaired.

The release describes arthroscopic surgery as a minimally invasive surgical procedure performed by an orthopedic physician in which a damaged joint is treated, through small incisions with specialized tools, under the guidance of a tiny camera. Meniscus surgeries are the most common arthroscopic surgery in the United States, with roughly one million procedures performed annually.

Ceterix’s NovoStitch suture passer enables surgeons to place stitches arthroscopically in tight joint compartments and thereby address complex knee, hip and shoulder injuries that, the company maintains, have not been amenable to repair in the past.