Articular cartilage repair

Articular cartilage repair includes a number of surgical procedures whose objective is to improve or restore damaged joint cartilage surfaces. This is an area of knee surgery where the effectiveness of techniques is still being established, but it does offer to patients with joint surface damage the possibility of delaying knee replacement or preventing it altogether.

Some individuals with cartilage damage will go on to develop arthritis but a lot will not - the jury still out as to who will and why. Perhaps we will know once the research on genetic biomarkers for arthritis turns up something conclusive but at present this is still a grey area.