Harefuah
-
Focal osteochondral lesions of the knee are a common cause of pain and other knee symptoms, and are mostly caused by traumatic injuries. The spontaneous repair ability of the articular cartilage tissue is very limited. Thus, focal chondral lesions result in early degenerative changes and post-traumatic osteoarthritis. ⋯ Yet, among the current available treatment options none was found to produce hyaline cartilage consistently. In order to improve the current treatment and to find new treatment techniques, significant advances were achieved in the research of stem cells, scaffolds and growth factors in the last years. Further advances and more comparative and long term studies, particularly those that evaluate the efficacy of the new treatment techniques are needed.