Knee Joint Cartilage Defects: Large Cartilage Defect Treatment Animation

Knee Joint Cartilage Defects: Large Cartilage Defect Treatment Animation

This animation demonstrates a cartilage graft transplantation procedure used to treat a large cartilage defect in the knee. In this procedure, a cartilage graft is taken from a cadaver donor and placed over the area of the patient’s cartilage defect.

This technique uses one large graft to achieve better coverage of the cartilage defect compared to other techniques that use multiple small circular grafts.

Here, we see a right knee, with the inner side of the knee on the right side of the screen. The knee is bent to expose the surfaces at the end of the femur, or thigh bone.

Here, we see a large cartilage defect on the inner end of the femur. First, a sizing instrument is used to measure and mark out the size of the cartilage defect.

Here, we see the inner half of the bottom of a femur, covered in articular cartilage, from a cadaver donor. The same sizing instrument is used to mark out the size of the cartilage graft that will be needed to cover the cartilage defect.

The donor femur is secured in the workstation and a cutting device of the same size is positioned over the marked area. A guide pin is inserted through the device to hold it in place, and the cutting device is impacted to cut out a piece of cartilage and bone from the femur.

The guide pin and cutting device are removed. A cutting guide of the same size is then placed over the marked area and tapped in place to cut deeper into the cartilage and bone.

A saw is then used to remove the underside of the cartilage with the attached bone, and the graft is removed. The graft is checked to make sure it is the correct size.

Next, a positioning instrument is placed over the cartilage defect and 2 guide pins are inserted into the bottom of the femur. Then, an instrument called a scorer is placed over the guide pins and tapped in place to make a cut around the defect.

A reamer is then placed over the guide pins to drill away bone. Lastly, surgical instruments are used to remove the remaining cartilage and bone between the 2 drilled sections.

A dilator is placed over the exposed bone and tapped in place to finalize the shape of the socket. A tiny drill is used to make small holes into the exposed bone to help stimulate the underlying bone marrow to help with healing.

In this procedure, the surgeon also places a bone gel over the exposed bone surface to further help with healing. The graft is positioned over the prepared socket and tapped into place. The procedure is now complete.