Articular cartilage lesions, with their inherent limited healing potential, remain a challenging problem for orthopaedic surgeons. Various techniques, both palliative and reparative, have been used to treat this injury with variable success rates. If not adequately treated, they may even lead to the development of early-onset osteoarthritis. Among all the available techniques, microfractures are used in restoring the cartilage tissue, especially in the deep and extended lesions. More recently, the need for minor bone trauma with still adequate bleeding resulted in the development of nanofractures. Nanofracturing means creating perforations with a smaller diameter that go deeper into the bone while damaging it less. This is supposed to reduce the injury to the subchondral bone and increase the amount of bone marrow-derived mesenchymal stromal cells at the bone surface. Thus, the aim of this pilot study is to evaluate the efficacy of nanofractures for the treatment of cartilage lesions of the knee, specifically focusing on the chondral healing that will be addressed with magnetic resonance imaging.
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Functional outcomes measured by International Knee Documentation Committee subjective score
Timeframe: 12 months