Cartilage Restoration and Transplantation

This procedure is usually used in young individuals with focal cartilage defects, caused due to injury or in a rare condition called Osteochondritis Dissecans (OCD). Pain is the most common symptom with occasional locking of joint in case of OCD. The common joints involved are knee, ankle and elbow.

Unlike other tissues in the body, cartilage does not heal well after injury, as it undergoes permanent damage. So there are various methods to stimulate cartilage formation depending on the size of the defect to restore the cartilage as congruent as possible.

The Procedures

Various procedures such as Chondroplasty, Mosaicplasty, Cartillage transplantation, Autologous Chondrocyte Implantation (ACI) are usually carried out for cartilage restoration and transplantation.

While the older methods stimulate cartilage growth by increasing local blood supply by mechanical means like chondroplasty, later methods transfer local cartilage from the same joint or from other joints.

But now with tissue culture methods and cell based therapy (ACI), the patient's own cells are grown in special labs and multiplied and placed on the defective area with special medium. This is a two staged procedure.