In the first major study of its kind, University of Utah School of Medicine researchers found the likelihood of tearing the meniscus, the cartilage that bears much of the load on the knee joint, increases dramatically with body mass index (BMI). (BMI is a measure of body fat based on height and weight. People with a BMI greater than 25 are considered overweight, and those with a BMI of more than 30 are considered obese.)

Overweight people are at least three times more likely to tear their meniscus, while the most obese men and women are 15 and 25 times, respectively, more likely to tear the cartilage, the U researchers report in the May edition of the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.

All the extra weight Americans are lugging around accounts for up to 450,000 out of 850,000 operations for meniscus tears annually, the researchers conclude. At an average of $3,000 per operation, that adds a whopper of a bill to the nation's medical costs, according to Kurt T. Hegmann, M.D., M.P.H., research associate professor of family and preventive medicine, who led the study.

"There's a potential savings of $1.3 billion in the costs associated with meniscus tears in overweight and obese people," said Hegmann, director of the U's Rocky Mountain Center for Occupational and Environmental Health.

Hegmann and his U colleagues studied 515 patients who underwent meniscal surgery between 1996-2000 at LDS Hospital in Salt Lake City and Utah Valley Regional Medical Center in Provo, Utah. These patients were compared to a control group of 9,944 other Utahns enrolled in the National Cancer Institute's Prostate, Lung, Colorectal, and Ovarian Cancer Screening Trial during the same years.

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Contact: Phil Sahm
Phil.Sahm@hsc.utah.edu
801-581-2517
University of Utah Health Sciences Center
19-Apr-2005