A Systematic Review of Functional Outcomes of Autologous Chondrocyte Implantation and Mosaicplasty in Treatment of Articular Knee Cartilage Defects

Abstract

Background Chondral and osteochondral defects constitute a major problem for young patients especially athletes, they result in pain, swelling and sometimes locking. Autologous chondrocyte implantation (ACI) and mosaicplasty have been used for treatment along the past 20 years especially for large lesions, we conduct this systematic review to compare the functional outcome of each intervention and determine which technique is superior in treatment. Methods The search of literature was conducted using electronic databases of The Cochrane library, MEDLINE, Journal of bone and joint surgery (JBJS), Google scholarly articles and Sciencedirect and after assessment 11 studies were obtained according to inclusion and exclusion criteria; 6 randomized control trials (level II of evidence), and 5 case series studies (level IV of evidence) Results After evaluation of all studies included; autologous chondrocyte implantation and mosaicplasty are nearly similar as regard functional outcome. however, mosaicplasty results decline in long term follow up . So mosaicplasty could be recommended according to the short term results as it is single stage operation and of a lower cost. Conclusion No difference between ACI and mosaicplasty as regards functional outcome. Keywords: "Mosaicplasty", "OATs", "autologous cartilage transplantation", "osteochondral cylinder transplantation", "autologous chondrocyte implantation", "matrix autologous chondrocyte transplantion", "osteochondral", "knee", "cartilage".