articular cartilage repair

The following are a list of surgeons that I know to have a special interest in cartilage repair -

Dr (Mr) Vladimir Bobic - Chester, UK

Dr (Mr) Tim Briggs - Watford, UK

Dr Mats Brittberg - Kungsbacka, Sweden

Understanding the cartilage repair experience from the patients’ perspective. by Karen Hambly BSc MCSP (Sports Scientist/Physiotherapist)

See Karen's Own Site

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.

To understand the issues of cartilage repair, it is important that you first learn just a little bit about what makes joint cartilage special, and why joint cartilage has trouble repairing itself.

I am constantly amazed by some of the experiences that people tell me they go through when they go to see their physio after they have had articular cartilage repair. A couple of classics that I come across way too frequently are -

“When I told my physio that I had ACI surgery they said – ‘so you’ve had your ligament repaired’!” or 

It wasn’t until I found myself in the position of being a prospective patient for articular cartilage repair that I decided to do a bit of reading around the area. Now you may think that as I am a fully qualified chartered physiotherapist that I should have known all about articular cartilage problems and how they are managed. The reality of things is that the only time in the whole of my physio training that articular cartilage was ever mentioned was in relation to osteoarthritis.

How did a UK physiotherapist working in sports medicine who five years ago had never even heard of half of the available articular cartilage repair procedures end up working with some of the top orthopaedic surgeons in the cutting-edge area of articular cartilage repair? Where to start? As the white rabbit told Alice in ‘Alice in Wonderland’ – “I’ve always found it’s helpful to start at the beginning.” So that is where I’m going to start - at the beginning!

In the 'in-depth review' section of the KNEEguru website there is a review of the topic of articular cartilage repair written by Karen Hambly - see Articular Cartilage Repair -

The following are a list of surgeons that I know to have a special interest in cartilage repair -

Dr (Mr) Vladimir Bobic - Chester, UK

Dr (Mr) Tim Briggs - Watford, UK

Dr Mats Brittberg - Kungsbacka, Sweden