[Treatment of chondral lesions from knee injuries in the professional soccer players. Review of 34 cases].

OBJECTIVE: Evaluate the results of Pridie chondroplasty as an efficient treatment to recover the complete activity in soccer players and compare this with others chondral repair techniques.

MATERIAL AND METHODS: The patients were professional soccer players, all with a knee cartilage injury treated with the Pridie technique in an arthroscopic surgery between March 1999--December 2004. The age of the patients and the presence of a simple meniscal tear wasn't a fact to exclude a patient. Complex meniscal tear and a ACL rupture were an exclusion criteria. We deferred the support by 6 to 8 weeks. We initiated rehabilitation to the 4-5 post operating day. The follow up average was of 30 months.

RESULTS: We included 34 patients, age rank 19-31 years (average 24.6), 11 of them with meniscal injury Degree I associated with chondral damage. In 26 patients (76.47%) the outcomes were good allowing them to take up again their high level sport activity. The rest (23.53%) had regular or bad results with decrement in the game level, 4 of which (11%) they retired of the professional practice in relation to the found injuries.

CONCLUSIONS: The follow up time give us a good validation to establish that the used technique is a treatment of low cost, surgically simple with favorable outcomes and low morbidity comparable to the results obtained with other useful techniques of condral repair in the professional soccer player.