Suffering from knee damage? Don't fret. City doctors claim a new technique in which the body's own cartilage cells are cultured and implanted into the damaged portion can help patients recover faster, without having to undergo knee replacement surgeries.
According to Dr Raju Vaishya, senior orthopaedic surgeon at Apollo Hospital, the treatment - known as Autologous Chondrocyte Implantation (ACI) - is practised at medical centres across the world and Apollo is going to introduce it soon. ACI means 'to get cartilage cells (chondrocyte) from yourself (autologous)'.
It is a two-stage procedure: harvesting a tiny portion of cartilage from a healthy area of the knee, cultivating it in a special medium that promotes its growth and injecting it into the diseased area in combination with a membrane (biomembrane) or in a scaffold matrix.
A leg brace is necessary till the cells grow and fill the defect in the cartilage. The patient can walk in three months and return to normal sporting activity after a year. This procedure is a boon for young people - especially sportsmen - as they can get back to their feet within a few months. It prevents complications like osteoarthritis.
"A 21-year-old patient who suffered severe knee injury in an accident seven months will undergo this procedure at our hospital on Sunday," said Vaishya. He was speaking at International Congress of the Indian Cartilage Society in the capital on Saturday.
Source:TNN
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