Treatment options for cartilage defects

Knee cartilage damage is a typical injury in sports. Activities with high axial and rotation forces as in skiing, jumping or go-stop sports may damage the cartilage of the joints. Cartilage defects also occur after ACL or meniscus defects, when not repaired. Injuries are treated individually according to the patient’s weight, load profile and static axis. Various methods in regenerative medicine have been established in recent years:​

• Small cartilage defects can be treated with suitable growth activators like Autologous Conditioned Plasma (ACP) or Platelet-Rich-Plasma (PRP).​​
• Unloading principles: functional unloading brace systems worn during activities like walking, tennis or cross country skiing. It is proved, that less pain and a better resilience is seen.

Arthroscopic procedures for cartilage repair:
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• Microfracture Surgery  is a biological self-healing technique used for small articular surface defects through fibrocartilage stimulation
  
• Artificial scaffolds are special patches or gels that can be used to repair damaged cartilage in defined defects.
• Larger cartilage defects are treated with autologous chondrocyte implantation (ACI) – small samples of cartilage cells from the joint are stimulated in the laboratory, resulting in new cells which are used to replace the damaged cartilage.

Surgical treatment of cartilage is still evolving. Repairing a damaged cartilage is challenging. However, good results with new methods are encouraging.

Autologous Conditioned Plasma (ACP)

Artificial scaffolds