Knee Cartilage Replacement

Patients suffering from arthritis have to deal with a lot of discomfort and complications due to the nature of the disease. Arthritis slowly eats up the cartilage in the knees, and one way to combat these effects is replacement surgery of the cartilage. This is an option that is very different from complete joint replacement surgery, and less intrusive and more economical as well.

The loss of cartilage within the knee ends up causing a lot of joint pain, inflammation and joint swelling in the knees, and this is a side of arthritis that cannot be prevented. As a curative measure, cartilage replacement of the knee is fast becoming a very popular choice of treatment, as it delays the crippling joint replacement surgery as much as possible. As the arthritis worsens, more and more of the cartilage gets worn out, so this surgery is a suitable and convenient solution.

How Easy Is It
Though cartilage can be produced in a lab using DNA samples, it is very difficult to replace it in the knee. By using the cartilage cells of a human body, duplicate cells can be cloned but injecting these into the knee will not prove very useful. Placing the cells in the right position is what the real problem is with this procedure, and there can be no guarantees about the same. Some bodies accept these cells eventually, whereas some reject them instantly and suffer from various side effects as a result of that.

Even though medical science has advanced enough to be able to clone these cartilage cells, it is still unable to show us a way to make the body accept these cells. For the process of stem cell cartilage replacement to be complete, the cells need to stick and adhere to the joint wherein they are injected, but this is dependent on the body alone and no one can say how fast or how successful this process of arthritis treatment would be. The problem arises because sometimes the new cartilage is unable to support the weight of the body and the legs, and is also unable to support the smooth motion of the movement of the legs.

As a result of this, many doctors claim that this process is not appropriate for arthritis patients as it gives them false hope. They say that people (especially sportsmen) who are suffering from minor traumatic injuries or a torn cartilage would be satisfied with this treatment, but it is not good enough for arthritis patients.

Related Problems
There are a few areas that need to be worked upon before the success rate of this surgery can be guaranteed. If these problems can be solved by medical science, then knee replacement could help hundreds of thousands of people. The first problem is that of adherence. The cartilage forms a thick lining on the end of the bones, so a way needs to be found to adhere the cartilage to the bone.

Secondly, one must know that the cartilage is made up of more than just cells. There are other components present in it like water, collagen, proteins and other non-cellular material. Simply injecting the cartilage cells into the knees does not deal with the necessity of all these materials. And lastly, arthritis patients who have suffered serious joint damage stand to gain nothing from it, due to the formation of bone spurs, and the flattening of the round edges of the bone. Simply put, this damage is irreparable.

Genetic engineering is an area that many scientists and giant medical companies are constantly working on, and the advanced state of technology today, has paved the way for someone finding a solution to this problem sooner, rather than later. It can't be long now before a permanent cure for arthritis is found, and before this surgery becomes an assured and guaranteed solution to this problem.

Some other aspects like knee ligament replacement are also being looked into, and this can only be a good thing for the patients who have to suffer a lot of hardships. More and more progress is being made, and the day will soon arrive where replacement of the knee cartilage will be standard procedure.