INJURED ARTICULAR CARTILAGE REPAIR
Abstract
BACKGROUND Articular cartilage covers the articulating ends of the bones in synovial joints. During movementsit enables the joints to operate at high loads while keeping contact stresses low,and create a low friction environment for the bones to move on each other. Among thesynovial joints, a knee is the one that is most frequently injured. Limited cartilage lesionsare frequently a main cause for pain and disturbances in knee motion. Due to inability ofarticular cartilage to initiate any clinically appreciable healing response, lesions can progressto untimely arthrosis. There are various operative methods for cartilage treatment.However, majority of them only treat symptoms temporarily. Namely, the tissue usuallydegenerates to fibrocartilage and symptoms reappear. More promising are those methodsof treatment which incorporate a replacement of missing cartilage with a proper substitute.These methods include a stimulation of the bone marrow to form a repair tissue,osteochondral transplantation and autologous chondrocyte implantation (ACI). ACI isa method of treatment that involves an implementation of the patient’s own culturedcartilage cells in the injured area. CONCLUSIONS Surveys show that the most frequently used surgical methods are mosaicplasty and bonemarrow stimulation with microfracturing. The efficacy of the autologous chondrocyte implantationmethod should be superior to microfracturing on a long run. Especially when(re)generation of the hyaline cartilage instead of fibrous tissue (fibrocartilage) is concerned.However, it has not been scientifically proved yetDownloads
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