Evolution of Cartilage Repair Technology

Articular cartilage plays an important role in daily joint activities. With the aging of the social population, the degenerative cartilage injury and the sports injury caused by inappropriate exercise of young patients, etc., the incidence rate of articular cartilage injury is constantly rising, and the injured patients tend to be younger. Although articular cartilage has its corresponding metabolic activities, it is difficult to recover and regenerate itself once it is damaged due to lack of nerve, blood vessel, and lymphatic tissue Common articular cartilage injuries can be divided into three types according to the degree of injury: partial cartilage injury, full-thickness cartilage injury, and osteochondral defect. If partial cartilage damage and full-thickness cartilage damage are not found and treated in time in the early stage, further deterioration will lead to serious osteochondral defects. After the corresponding subchondral bone injury, the upward invasion of the upper cartilage layer will also cause the overall osteochondral injury. Therefore, whether the osteochondral injury caused by the top-down or the osteochondral injury caused by the bottom-up, it seriously affects the normal activities of human joints. It not only brings great inconvenience to the daily life of patients, but also causes huge economic and psychological burden to patients. At the same time, it also consumes a large number of social public medical resources. Therefore, seeking an effective osteochondral repair strategy is not only the urgent need and hope of the society, but also one of the clinical scientific problems that clinicians and scientists urgently need to solve.