Cartilage Repair
Cartilage Repair and Regeneration With Hip & Knee Orthopaedics
Cartilage damage can adversely affect your health If you leave it untreated. It does not heal on its own. Let us help you restore damaged cartilage with effective medication and surgical procedures.
Experiencing Pain in Your Knee?
When Do I Need Surgery for Cartilage Injury?
When you experience recurrent pain, swelling or sensation of “catching” in the knee, that limits you from doing your favourite physical activity or sports, then you should consider surgery for your cartilage injury.
You should also already have tried medications, rest and physiotherapy and still be experiencing knee symptoms, before considering surgery for the cartilage injury.
What does the Surgeon Do During Cartilage Repair Surgery?
Our experienced surgeons will use a keyhole approach, introducing an instrument known as the arthroscope, to look around the knee and assess the severity of the lesion. Next the cartilage ulcer will need to be cleaned up or debrided, to achieve stable margins/walls. After that, microfracture will be performed using specialised awls/picks. This is the most commonly-done and reproducible way of stimulating new cartilage growth. Prior to embarking on this technique, MRI would also have been done to assess the size of the lesion, as typically the cartilage lesion should range from 0.5cm to 2cm for this technique to achieve good outcomes.
Thereafter, usually a scaffold will be applied over the lesion, and this can be enhanced with bone marrow aspirate concentrate.
Absorbable sutures will be placed and waterproof dressings will be applied.
The cartilage repair surgery is typically done under general anaesthesia.
Related Information
Cartilage repair can be done as a day surgery. Crutches and weight bearing restrictions may be required after the surgery depending on the location of the cartilage defect. Crutches might be required up to 6 to 8 weeks post-surgery. Patients are usually allowed to resume high impact
activities 3 months after surgery.
Dressings change will be required every 4-5 days. A shower cover can be provided to help keep the dressings dry and intact.
After surgery, time should also be set aside for physiotherapy and rehabilitation. This will be focused on swelling reduction in the initial phase, followed by quads reactivation and strengthening, and thereafter conditioning exercises to facilitate a return to your favourite sporting activities.
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Orthopaedic Surgery Specialist
Orthopaedic Surgery Specialist
Address
38 Irrawaddy Road,
Mount Elizabeth Novena Specialist Centre,
#09-21/38, Singapore 329563
Opening Hours
Monday to Friday: 9 am to 5 pm
Saturday: 9am to 1pm
Closed on Sundays and Public Holidays
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