Background: Articular cartilage is susceptible to mechanical trauma. Injury can occur through a single traumatic event or Repetitive overloading with forces exceeding the biomechanical carrying capacity of articular cartilage. The treatment of focal full thickness articular defect in the knee has continued to present a challenge, with no traditional treatment method providing consistent acceptable long term clinical results.
Objective: is to evaluate the short term functional outcome of the treatment of osteochondral defects of the knee with autologous osteochondral transplantation with the OATS technique.
Patients and methods: This prospective study includes nineteen adult patients, 16 males (84.2%) and 3 females (15.8%) having focal articular cartilage full thickness defects of the knee less than 2 centimeters in diameter. Mean age was 29.6 (range 22-35 years). All of them were treated by arthroscopic assisted osteochondral autograft transplantation in the period between May 2006 and June 2009. Mean follow up period was 24.2 months (range 12 to 36 months). For standard comparison between pre and post-operative state of knee, the Hospital for Special Surgery knee service rating system (H.S.S.) was used which gives a maximum 100 points to a normal knee.
Results: About 84.2% (16 patients) of the patients were Enthusiastic or satisfied with their results. All of these patients had
satisfactory HSS results. Statistically, there was highly significant correlation between patient assessment and postoperative results.
Conclusion: Osteochondral autograft has a good rate of success, reliability of subchondral bone healing with a high survival rate of the articular cartilage graft and consequently improvement of joint function and pain relief.
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