Knee Cartilage Replacement Therapy - Grafting

Grafting

There are three methods of grafting cartilage defects, including periosteal grafting, osteochondral grafting (mosaicplasty), and articular cartilage stem cell paste grafting. Periosteal grafts are harvested from the perichondrial tissue and grafted to the articular cartilage defect. Given low long-term success rates, perichondrial grafting alone has not been clinically accepted as a particularly excellent therapy. Mosaicplasty, a form of chondral grafting, is a therapy designed to replace cartilage on the surface of the knee joint that has been damaged by trauma or arthritis by implanting osteochondral plugs. The implants can be autogenic (autologous) or allogenic. Paste grafting involves replacing damaged cartilage with autologous cartilage and cancellous bone from the intercondylar notch in the center of the knee that is first morselized into a paste (typically with hydroxyapatite) to better fill the defect and more successfully promote chondrocyte activity and cartilage formation. These procedures are often performed arthroscopically.