What is osteoarthritis?
Osteoarthritis is the wear and tear of joint structures. This primarily includes the irreversible destruction of joint cartilage. As it progresses, the cartilage ruptures. The defects become deeper and larger, resulting in painful cartilage damage.
Muscles, tendons and capsule structures are also affected due to increasing axial misalignment. The resulting symptoms include pain, limited mobility, swelling, axial misalignment and stiffness.
Knee Arthrosis: Conservative Treatment Options
For all forms of osteoarthritis, the rule is “who rests, rusts.” But how should you move when pain limits this?
In the case of knee osteoarthritis, there are many conservative measures that can reduce pain. Such as physiotherapy, walking aids, medicines or knee-friendly sports. However, the measures depend heavily on the patient's motivation and patience.
Complete cartilage regeneration and thus a completely symptom-free life is very lengthy, only possible under certain conditions and sometimes impossible. It therefore makes sense to think about regenerative cartilage processes.
What treatment do you really use to restore the original cartilage so that you can live symptom-free again
In the past, there were many surgical measures which helped the patient for a short time but were not sufficient in the long term. For example, the use of an artificial knee joint with the “old” methods was only delayed, but not prevented.
Recent studies have shown that over 50% of all hip and knee prosthesis implantations in Germany would not be necessary! This is where our new, cutting-edge treatment options come in.
With our procedure, it is possible to heal most cartilage defects and thus prevent a prosthesis. And this up to a 4th degree of cartilage damage.
With more than 600 successful chondrofiller operations, we are one of the world's most experienced practices in this area. Every year, Arthroprax performs as many meniscus implantations as all other German doctors combined. So you're in good hands.
Latest method: Using collagen for cartilage damage
Collagen is found in all structures of the human body. As a protein, it is the main component of skin, tendons and cartilage. To repair a cartilage defect, we use a high-purity biological collagen gel, which was developed at the Frauenhofer Institute to treat cartilage damage.
This gel only needs to be applied to the defect through a minimally invasive procedure.
In the next few weeks, cartilage induction will occur, which means that the surrounding cartilage cells will grow into this gel. That's why I like to describe it as fertilizer.
The clear advantage of the gel is that the implant does not have to be cut to size, but adapts completely to the defect.
Existing studies show that cartilage regenerates after just a short period of time. In our own observations, we can confirm this in control MRI scans after 8 months.
The following are illustrations from the study: “Beck OT: Cartilage induction using cell-free collagen matrix (chondrofiller liquid). Clinical and MRI-controlled follow-up. OUP 2018; 7:620-624 DOI 10.3238/oup.2018.0620-0624"
The advantage over all previous measures
The advantage over all previous cartilage regenerative measures is that the original cartilage is produced here again. The patient regains fully resilient cartilage without the use of foreign materials.
The previous competing methods were microfracturing and autological chondrocyte transplantation. In the latter, the knee joint was treated in two procedures. During the first operation, cells were removed, during the second, the cultivated cells were inserted into the defect.
In the case of cartilage induction with the gel described above, a single arthroscopy is completely sufficient, because this procedure can be used to reach and treat all defects.
Limits of the process
The limits of the collagen process lie in the size of the defect: max. 4 cm in diameter. The opposite side must have a largely intact cartilage coating, as this structure is used to model the surface. More than 50% of the meniscus should also be present. If this is not the case, it is possible to implant a replacement meniscus during surgery.
With early treatment, all options can be used to preserve your biological joint!
I would be happy to advise you personally and without obligation in your case as well.
