Transplants from multiplied cells of the patient’s articular cartilage or his bone marrow, collagen implants that are built into the patient’s knee joint – these are the latest methods of treating articular cartilage damage.
This painful and disabling condition affects more and more people. The society is aging, has obesity problems, some of us do not take any exercise at all, others overuse the joints when practicing sports – all this leads to cartilage damage and its premature wear.
Every year, such injuries of the knee joint only in Europe and the United States suffer from almost 2 million people, of which 140. is the most severe damage requiring surgical intervention. Untreated cartilage damage can quickly lead to irreversible degenerative changes.
A two-day international scientific conference on modern methods of biological treatment of articular cartilage defects has begun in Katowice. It was organized by doctors from the Provincial Trauma Surgery Hospital in Piekary Śląskie, considered to be the leading facility of this profile in Poland.
This is the first international conference in Poland on such a broad topic, with the participation of world authorities, incl. from Switzerland, Italy and Israel – emphasized Dr. Bogdan Koczy, the director of the bakery trauma.
In less severe cases, in the treatment of cartilage damage and degeneration, conservative treatment is sufficient: physiotherapy, drugs that relieve pain and regenerate the cartilage. A more advanced method is regenerative injections of hyaluronic acid administered directly into the knee joint.
In the case of deep, large damage, operations are necessary, e.g. toilet of the joint, i.e. cleaning the defects from fragments of damaged cartilage or stimulating the layer under the cartilage with punctures and drills to release the marrow cells, enabling the regeneration of the joint.
The latest achievements include the so-called biological methods that allow the body to use its own repair potential. This is, for example, the transplant of autologous chondrocytes used in Piekary – that is, the cells forming cartilage, grown in a tissue bank, previously taken from the unloaded part of the knee. By breeding autologous chondrocytes, several hundred of them are obtained from several hundred. The suspension is then placed on a suitable matrix and glued to the defect. Another method uses bone marrow mesechymal cells – taken from the iliac plate, they are fed into the defect, improving healing.
As emphasized by Dr. Wojciech Widuchowski from the bakery trauma, implants made of body-friendly biomaterials are a dynamically developing method of treatment. We introduce an implant that allows the cartilage and bone layer to be rebuilt, because the body is able to accept it and build it into itself. This is another step forward – he stressed.
On Friday, during the conference, for the first time in Poland, the operation of implanting a multi-layer collagen-magnesium implant into the knee joint will be presented live. (PAP)