Dr. John Gray on Meniscus Injuries

Board-certified, fellowship-trained sports medicine surgeon John Gray, M.D., shares how meniscus tears can occur as well as how they are affected by the natural aging process.

Please see below for the full video transcript.

Typically, when you injure your meniscus, it's either in a squatting position coming up from a squat to a stand. A quick twisting or turning injury where the meniscus gets, basically, trapped in the knee, twisted, and you can tear a piece of the meniscus. The meniscus can also tear in an older population. And what I mean by that is maybe in 45 and older, what we call a degenerative tear of the meniscus.

And in that population, the meniscus itself it's not quite as spongy as it is in a younger population. That is what we would call a natural aging process of the meniscus. So when you have a degenerative meniscal tear, it's not always something that is highly symptomatic but can be part of something that we all grow into as we get older and sort of the aches and pains of the knee.