Healing time for meniscus tear without surgery?

Menisci generally don't heal. Only the small margin that has a blood supply has an intrinsic healing mechanism.

Real Runners wrote:

Menisci generally don't heal. Only the small margin that has a blood supply has an intrinsic healing mechanism.

Maybe 'heal' is the wrong word. I just want to get an idea of when functionality is restored--from what I've read, that happens on its own pretty frequently with this injury. I just don't know how long it takes, what I can do to best encourage that process and how I should approach my return to running.

It really depends on the type of tear you have(degenerative vs traumatic), the location and your symptoms. Degenerative tears, especially if you have arthritis are usually best managed by conservative treatment but tears that are unstable (knee buckling, catching, giving way) will usually require surgery. If it's a degenerative tear usually 6-8 weeks of PT, icing will improve it quite a bit but don't return to running too fast (like I did).

old knees wrote:

It really depends on the type of tear you have(degenerative vs traumatic), the location and your symptoms. Degenerative tears, especially if you have arthritis are usually best managed by conservative treatment but tears that are unstable (knee buckling, catching, giving way) will usually require surgery. If it's a degenerative tear usually 6-8 weeks of PT, icing will improve it quite a bit but don't return to running too fast (like I did).

Thanks, knees. I'm honestly not sure whether it's degenerative or traumatic; neither makes much sense. I passed the 6-8 week mark a long time ago but the knee barely hurts anymore. It just pops (painlessly) with certain types of compression (e.g. backwards lunges). My main problem now is an absurdly sore/stiff calf on the affected leg, which I presume--perhaps incorrectly?--to be due to a change in form.

How did you know when you were ready to run again?

Anyone else care to share their story?

I tore mine playing basketball and played through it for the rest of the season. It was pretty pathetic. I was the point guard and pretty much walked the ball up and could not guard anyone.

As far as running, it took about 3 months before I could really run on it. I started back slowly (10-15 miles a week) for the first few weeks.

4 to 6 weeks

Appreciate the feedback so far, so thank you guys.

Bumping to see who else is out there. It's been about 5 months since I first notices the pain--anyone else take a lengthy time to recover or relate to the other symptoms I've mentioned?

I tore my meniscus before starting college.

It would pop in and out all through the year.

Maybe 4-5 times. Each time my knee swelled and I hobbled for a couple days, up to a week and then was OK.

I had surgery over the summer to check it out and they wound up repairing it and I had an week recovery.

It would occasionally still give way after that now and then but not as bad.

I don't know if it would have got better without the surgery - maybe with strengthening around the knee.

That was 25 years ago so things have changed in diagnosis.

I've been running on a torn meniscus for about 4 years now. Probably trauma. A couple times the knee has really swelled up after a race and I could hardly walk. A week later I could run on it again though.

I take 2 ibuprofen a couple hours before I run each day. This has really controlled the inflammation. I very rarely ever take more than those 2 ibuprofen unless I get a headache.

I have also found that as long as I run at least an easy 3 or 4 miles, my knee won't swell up. If I take a day or two off, my knee becomes noticeably swollen and is harder to run on.

Between the above and running in Hoka's this year, I should end up with around 3,000 miles. I've raced everything from a road mile to a 6 hour trail race. Just ran a road marathon a couple weeks ago.

I have no intentions of having surgery unless it suddenly gets much worse.