Frontiers of tissue engineering

Abstract

In Australia, approximately 70,000 patients undergo surgical examination of the interior of a joint (chondral defects), each year. Sixty per cent of them are due to cartilage defects. It was thought that there were no effective surgical methods that could restore articular cartilage and prevent the onset of arthritis, but this has recently changed. Techniques such as autogenous chondrocyte transfer therapy (ACTT) have led to the concept of cell-based therapy that has given rise to the new field of tissue engineering in Orthopaedics.