Comparison of cartilage self repairs and repairs with costal and articular chondrocyte transplantation in treatment of cartilage defects in rats.

In our experiment, we tried to assess the potential of repair of full-thickness defects in articular cartilages of rabbit femurs. An artificially made, full-thickness defect in the rabbit's femoral patellar groove was created. The defects were divided into six groups. The reparative tissue was evaluated by macroscopic, histological, and immunohistochemical examinations. The reparative tissues in defects with transplanted chondrocytes, had mostly a hyaline-like cartilage appearance and were firmly attached to the surrounding normal cartilage. Only in the control group with periosteal flap and broken subchondral plate, there were signs of partial repair. Self repair of rabbit articular cartilage is very limited. Transplantation of chondrocytes, costal and articular, without differences between groups, is a very potential treatment, producing hyaline-like repair tissue with good histological results.