Treatment of Articular Cartilage Defects: Focus on Tissue Engineering

Evidence from laboratory and animal studies provides groundwork for understanding mechanisms and potential before human studies continue.

• Level A · Stronger Clinical Evidence
• Level B · Emerging clinical evidence with positive signals
• Level C · Early human research exploring benefits
• Level D · Scientific groundwork from lab and animal studies
• Emerging · Emerging topic under active research

Abstract (original English)

The treatment of articular cartilage defects seems to be one of the greatest challenges in modern orthopaedics. From a medical point of view there are 3 main goals to achieve for cartilage trauma treatment: restoration of the joints motion, pain relief and elimination/delay of the onset of osteoarthritis. Treatment can be divided into conservative (including pharmacotherapy, arthrocentesis and physiotherapy) and surgical. The last comprises reparative techniques, regenerative methods and symptomatic treatment. While both are focused on reconstruction of the damaged cartilage, the difference lies in the type of filling tissue. Reparative techniques include: drilling of the subchondral bone, spongiolisation, abrasion, mictrofracture, and autologous matrix induced chondrogenesis (AMIC). Regenerative methods contain: periosteal and perichondral grafts, mosaicplasty, autologous chondrocyte implantation and matrix-induced autologous chondrocyte implantation (MACI). Nowadays tissue engineering, including gene therapy, is emerging as one of the key approaches to cartilage treatment and holds promises for new achievements and better outcomes of many cartilage diseases and traumas.

Evidence level

Evidence from laboratory and animal studies provides groundwork for understanding mechanisms and potential before human studies continue.

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