Treatment of young patients with multiple cartilage lesions is difficult. I did this study to look at how patients actually did with multiple cartilage transplants because this is somewhat of a controversial topic. I wanted to know the outcomes of cartilage restoration procedures to evaluate what makes the most sense for treating these young patients.
Moreover, insurance companies often refuse to approve surgery when there is more than one cartilage defect. It is unfair for young patients to be denied surgery and told to wait till they get old enough for a knee replacement.
Investigate Outcomes
The objective of this research was to evaluate the outcomes, survivorship, and complications following multi-surface cartilage restoration procedures at minimum 2-year follow-up.
Cartilage Restoration Procedures
“Cartilage restoration procedures, including osteochondral allograft (OCA) transplantation, autologous chondrocyte implantation (ACI), and osteochondral autograft transfer (OATS), have become more prevalent in the United States over the past 2 decades. Given the growing popularity of the aforementioned procedures, the rate of development of novel cartilage restoration techniques continues to increase. However, despite numerous recent advances in the field of cartilage restoration, the short-term, midterm, and long-term results of these procedures remain mixed in the literature.“
“Although the incidence of multi-surface grade-IV chondral or osteochondral defects about the knee has yet to be elucidated, it is not uncommon for patients to present with grade-IV chondral or osteochondral defects on multiple surfaces of a joint, particularly in joints such as the knee, that experience high loads during weight-bearing. These lesions can be severely debilitating, and patients with focal chondral defects can have an impairment in their quality of life to the same degree as a patient with end-stage knee osteoarthritis.6 Young patients with multi-surface grade-IV chondral or osteochondral defects pose a particular challenge to surgeons. The decision must be made to either proceed with partial or total knee arthroplasty, which has numerous disadvantages in this population, or consider multi-surface cartilage restoration procedures.”
Read the full research article in Sage Journals: Multi-Surface Cartilage Defects about the Knee Treated with Cartilage Restoration Procedures Show Good Outcomes and Survivorship at Minimum 2-Year Follow-Up
Photo by Jeffrey F Lin on Unsplash