Tensile strength of the tibial meniscal attachments in the rabbit.

The rabbit knee is a common model for meniscus replacement, but data on the failure load of its meniscal attachments are not available. Therefore we determined the tensile failure load of the normal attachment of the rabbit meniscus. Both knee joints of five adolescent New Zealand white rabbits were dissected, leaving only the menisci intact on the tibia. Both menisci were sectioned at the midpoint along the circumference, and the anterior attachment of the lateral meniscus and the anterior and posterior attachments of the medial meniscus were tested on a MTS 858 machine. In the rabbit, the posterior attachment of the lateral meniscus inserts on the femur and thus was not tested. All failures occurred within the soft tissue of the attachment. The anterior attachments had significantly different failure loads (lateral, 158 +/- 28N; medial, 108 +/- 25N), and both were stronger than the posterior attachment of the medial meniscus (75 +/- 23N, p < 0.05). There were no differences between left and right knees. The relatively high failure loads in the meniscus attachments may be indicative of the normal tensile loads developed in these structures and the demands on the fixation of a meniscal substitute.