Injuries to the articular cartilage

Stephan Vogt, Andreas B. Imhoff

Research output: Contribution to journalReview articlepeer-review

2 Scopus citations

Abstract

Injuries to articular cartilage are commonly encountered in orthopedic sports medicine. These lesions can lead to sport invalidity and premature osteoarthritis. The management of chondral and osteochondral lesions represents a challenge to clinicians and scientists. The aim of the therapy has to be the recurrence to former sport levels and the prevention of early osteoarthritis. Today there are different concepts of treatment. One therapy principle is the recruitment of mesenchymal stem cells. These procedures lead at best to fibrocartilaginous repair tissue that is functionally inferior to normal hyaline cartilage. Another group of procedures is the transplantation of autologous osteochondral grafts, which provide repair with a hyaline cartilage matrix and show good clinical medium-term results. But osteochondral grafts are limited and there is a potential donor-site morbidity. Finally, the transplantation of autologous chondrocytes is used. However, this kind of transplantation repairs the chondral injury only by fibrocartilaginous repair tissue, too. Therefore, new techniques for the treatment of articular cartilage injuries have to be established. The most promising field today is the combination of tissue-engineering and gene therapeutic methods for the treatment of the chondral and osteochondral lesions.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)325-331
Number of pages7
JournalEuropean Journal of Trauma
Volume32
Issue number4
DOIs
StatePublished - Aug 2006

Keywords

  • Autologous chondrocyte transplantation
  • Condral/osteochondral lesion/injury
  • Gene therapy
  • Mesenchymal stem cells
  • Osteochondral transplantation
  • Tissue engineering

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Injuries to the articular cartilage'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this