Information about a piece of news titled Cartilage defects in the knee – an insolvable problem?
Cartilage defects in the knee – an insolvable problem?
Intoduction
Stig Heir defended his phd thesis, "Focal Cartilage Defects in the Knee", on Thursday May 5th.
Patients with focal cartilage defects in their knees presented major problems with pain and functional impairment.
Their quality of life being affected to the same extent as in patients scheduled for knee replacement.
What's worse?
This was one of the findings when comparing four patient groups awaiting different knee surgery treatment. The cartilage patients scored significantly worse than ACL-deficient patients for all subscores of KOOS.
During the subsequent 5-8 years following detection of a cartilage defect by knee arthroscopy, the patients improved their knee function, regardless of having cartilage repair or not.
They did not, however, regain normal knee function. Moreover, radiological changes in the affected knee were present in 28 % at the 6-year follow up.
Experimental studies
In an experimental study the intraarticular location of a focal cartilage defect showed to predict the natural history of defect filling and subchondral mineralized tissue changes.
We propose that this knowledge should be considered in evaluating results of cartilage repair in animal models.
More research needed
By comparing two commonly used techniques for cartilage repair, mosaic plasty resulted in higher degree of tissue filling than microfracture technique.
Large standard deviations, however, imply unpredictable results in the single case – even in a standardized animal model.
Mosaic plasty affected the subchondral mineralized tissues more than microfracture technique, the implications of the latter, however, being unknown.