Focal articular cartilage defects of the knee: surgical treatment

Abstract

Articular hyaline cartilage has a fundamental role in mechanical load distribution on joints. Injuries of this tissue, which has limited potential to heal, often cause pain and have a serious impact on function. Managing these injuries is a real challenge for the orthopaedic surgeon, then many strategies were proposed to repair such type of lesions for restoring the joint surface and improving patients’ symptoms. The authors focused their attention on autologous chondrocyte transplantation and mosaicplasty. A careful literature analysis was performed on these strategies, trying to find the best evidence available on these topics. Our search strategies included: The Cochrane Library, Health Technology Assessment (HTA) Database, MEDLINE, TRIP, CINAHL, EMBASE, SPORTDiscus. Although the analysed techniques are so popular in orthopaedics, poor scientific evidences are reported in literature and many controversial data exist.