Treatment Of Articular Cartilage Defect With Osteochondral Allograft: An Experimental Study

Osteochondral allograft transplantation has been successfully used in the treatment of chondromalacia patella, osteonecrosis and focal osteoarthrosis. There are three questions in the clinic. First, there has been no basic studies compared with the usefulness of osteochondral autografts versus allografts. Sencond, Lactated Ringer solution is traditionally adopted for the storage of fresh osteochondral allografts, for storage periods of two to seven days, there isn't enough time for the clinc. Third, the results between fresh the osteochondral allograft and stored allograft have not been confirmed. We planed three experiments for solve the above question.Part Ⅰ . The effects of fresh rabbit osteochondral allografts and autograft . Osteochondral defects were experimentally prepared in New Zealand white rabbits, and osteochondral auto and allografting were performed with press-fit technique in the present study. A 4.0 mm (diameter) × 4.0 mm (thinkness) osteochondral defect was created in 20 New Zealand white rabbit knees. Auto osteochondral graft, collected from the contralateral knee, was transplanted into the defect. All rabbits were sacrificed at 12 weeks. Subsequently, the status of the respective osteochondral grafts were macroscopically, histologically, viability cell checked by confocal microscopy, indention test evolved. There was no histologically significant difference in the status of the osteochondral grafts between fresh autografts and fresh allografts. The grafts demonstrated cartilage viability. Osteochondral transplants undergo an increase in the stiftness in the short term, with evidence of structurally intact grafts. But allografts are lower than the autografts. Fresh allografts can be useful donor osteochondral grafts.