Tissue-engineering am kniegelenk - Was ist gesichert?

Injuries to the knee joint can affect all structures. For example, chondral or osteochondral lesions are typical injuries in orthopaedics. Since regeneration of damaged articular cartilage does not occur, these lesions can lead to premature osteoarthritis. Knee ligaments or menisci can be affected additionally. These injuries can induce knee instabilities and decrease joint congruence. Both will lead to unfavourable pressure distributions in the joint with a higher probability for further cartilage damage and the risk for premature osteoarthritis. Adequate therapy of these injuries is therefore an important goal. Since the results of conventional therapies were not satisfactory, new alternatives were sought in the past decade. Methods in the field of tissue engineering seem to be especially promising. In these, autologous cells are harvested and proliferated under cell culture conditions. After proliferation, cells are transplanted into the defect with biological or synthetic components/matrices. Autologous chondrocyte transplantation is one example of tissue engineering in the field of articular cartilage lesions. However, this procedure has to be compared with conventional methods like autologous osteochondral transplantation and procedures for the recruitment of mesenchymal stem cells, which show partially comparable or better results. In addition, several attempts have been undertaken in tissue engineering of ligaments and menisci. Success in tissue engineering of these structures has, however, been limited until now.