Damage to cartilage - Treatment. Treatment options for damaged cartilage
There are different situations during sports, at leisure in everyday life, which lead to injury of ankle and knee joints and wrists. Very often it is not just a light sprain and trauma. And this leads to significant damage to the cartilage with edema, hemorrhage, and the blocking of the joint and, consequently, to the strongest pain.
If medication and physiotherapy does not relieve the pain, you should promptly remove damaged cartilage. Since untreated, these injuries will inevitably lead already at young age to wear a painful joints (arthritis).
In principle there are three different methods for the rapid elimination of small and medium-sized defects in the cartilage.
Treatment in their own blood
A small drill or chisel-drilled small holes in the adjacent cartilage. This is called microfracturing. These small holes the body tries to "repair", while in areas of deficiency and delayed blood cells. After a few months of this scar is formed fibrous tissue and fibrocartilage in the defect site. "We do microfracturing for many years in all kinds of cartilage defects of minimally invasive method. This means that interference is not a big burden for the patient. This "making new cartilage" can also be a method of distancing the moment the need for joint replacement in osteoarthritis worsening an early stage, "- explains the medical director of our clinic, Professor Werner Siebert. Due to the fact that it replaces the cartilage is different from normal cartilage, and its stability and strength are limited. However, each patient is manifested in different ways.
Transplanting own osteochondral grafts
Another way to "repair" of cartilage defects is the transplantation of bone-cartilage own cylinder, it is called "osteochondral transplantation" or "mosaic of plastic." From non-or low-load-bearing parts are cut out of the joint bone and cartilage fragments and transplanted to the extent possible, the entire area of the defect. In this case, the fibrous cartilage is formed only on the transitions. This operation is usually performed arthroscopically, too, that is, through the "keyhole." Coverage of cartilage defects of bone and cartilage grafts, of course, has a chapel, since the person has only a limited amount of donor cartilage from the joint units with a small load. This method is not suitable for large defects or wear and tear far come joint.
Cartilage from the laboratory
Nothing is impossible. There is already a method of removing large articular cartilage defects of its own weight of cartilage from the laboratory. In marked osteoarthritis, but this is impossible. At arthroscopy, a small amount of cartilage is taken from the departments of the joint with a small load. Cells were isolated and propagated in a special laboratory to the desired number of defects per square centimeter of the cartilage. Now begins the biochemical production process of the new cartilage tissue. A few weeks later a second operation transplanted cartilage implant from the laboratory to the place of the defect. Once the cartilage cells are again "at home", they immediately begin to again produce a new source cartilage.
