(COLUMBUS, Ohio) – Doctors are testing a novel approach to repairing damaged cartilage in the knee. They harvest healthy cartilage cells from a patient, use those cells to grow new cartilage in a laboratory, then implant it back into the patient’s knee in an effort to help it heal.
“Unfortunately when it comes to knee cartilage, once it’s damaged, it’s damaged. It doesn’t heal or regrow, and over time it can erode and lead to osteoarthritis,” said Dr. David C. Flanigan, an orthopaedic surgeon at The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center. “If this approach can help improve function and outcomes for patients, this may be the future of how we address cartilage problems,” he said.
Right now, surgeons operate to remove damaged cartilage from the knee, not repair it, so new options for treatment are desperately needed.
In the last decade, the number of surgeries for knee cartilage damage has shot up nearly 40 percent to almost a quarter of a million surgeries per year.
