title: Role of autologous chondrocyte transplantation in articular cartilage defects: An experimental study.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Injuries of articular cartilage (AC) have very limited potential to heal, because they are avascular and this may subsequently lead to secondary arthrosis. Autologous cultured chondrocytes transplantation is can be used to create hyaline or hyaline-like repair in a cartilage defect area. The purpose of this study was to repair artificially created full-thickness AC defects in 20 rabbit knee joints with autologous cultured chondrocytes.
  
  
  METHODS
  An AC defect of 3 mm was created on the lateral condyle of both tibiae. The defect was filled with autologous chondrocytes cultured in vitro and fixed with fibrin, at a later stage on the left side. The right knee acted as a control. The rabbits were sacrificed after 3, 6, and 12 weeks of transplantation and the reparative tissues were analyzed macroscopically and histologically.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Histological scores of the cultured autologous chondrocyte transplanted knees were significantly better than the control knees at 3, 6, and 12 weeks following the transplantation. Integration of repaired tissue with adjacent cartilage, hyaline characteristics of repaired tissue, maturity of cartilage, and cellularity increases with duration and is significant in chondrocytes-transplanted defects compared to control. The histological scores also become better with increasing duration of followup.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Transplantation of autologous chondrocytes cultured in vitro and fixed with fibrin is effective in repairing AC defects.
authors.affiliation: Department of Orthopaedics, Institute of Medical Sciences, Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh, India.
authors.forename: Amit
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Rastogi
authors.forename: Pradeep
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Srivastava
authors.forename: Zafer
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Iqbal
authors.forename: Vinay
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Kumaraswamy
authors.forename: Ravindra Pratap
authors.initials: RP
authors.lastname: Singh
keywords: Cartilage; articular cartilage defects; cultured chondrocyte transplantation