NOTES - Surgical Procedures :

bone drilling / fibrocartilage - - Posted by Laura945 (Laura945), 23 February 2004

I've already had 2 operations on my right knee, a patella realignment to stop it from dislocating (which worked), and an arthroscopy to clean out the subsequent breakdown of cartilage (which worked temporarily).

My surgeon now wants to drill holes in my patella to stimulate the growth of fibrocartilage to cover up the bald spots on the bone.  

Does anyone know anything about this procedure?  Does it work?  What's the recovery time?  I've searched the net, but without the specific technical name of the procedure, I haven't been able to find anything.
Posted by Beauzer (Beauzer), 23 February 2004

The procedure is called microfracture.  It can help temporarily.  It causes the damaged area to fill in with fibrocartilage (scar cartilage, not the normal articular cartilage, but better than nothing).  I've had it done once on my femur and it worked for about 4 years.  Can't speak as to the patella though...

As far as recovery goes, a lot of times you'll have to be NWB for as long as 6 weeks.  I was lucky as my OS at the time didn't think that bearing weight made any difference in the long-term outcome so I was able to walk right away, but I don't think that most people do this.

Hope that helps,
Danielle
Posted by KBSur (KBSur), 27 February 2004

My boyfriend Andrew had that done about 6 years ago and he had a reduction in pain initially, but he has to undergo another surgery to pin down/remove the fibrocartlidge that grew in and eventually deteriorated.   This is definitely a temporary fix.
Posted by PPicard (PPicard), 19 September 2004

There is a new product that was developped in Montreal Canada to promote the growth of cartilage. They is currently a doctor who got the approval for 25 experimental operations. This is geared initially to be used instead of knee replacement.

The name is CarTGel.

I am very interested in this product and would like to know what your own doctor might think of it.

Regards
Paul

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