Stimulating Meniscal Cartilage Regeneration Using Recombinant Growth Factors Invitro

INTRODUCTION Meniscal tears are common debilitating injuries that can have dramatic consequences especially for young athletes. Healing of meniscal tears following surgical repair is essentially only feasible for tears within the peripheral, vascular, zone. By comparison, tears that occur within the inner, avascular, zone do not heal and most commonly are treated by excision. This in turn greatly increases the potential for secondary osteoarthrosis. Clearly, there is a clinical need to augment surgical techniques, extending meniscal repair to the avascular zone.