Up-to-date Review and Cases Report on Chondral Defects of Knee Treated by ACI Technique: Clinical-instrumental and Histological Results.

The limited regenerative potential of a full thickness defect of the knee joint cartilage has certainly conditioned the development of therapeutic strategies that take into account all the aspects of the healing process. The most common treatments to repair chondral and osteochondral lesions are bone marrow stimulation, osteochondral autograft transplantation, autologous matrix-induced chondrogenesis, and autologous chondrocyte implantation. We like to emphasize the difference between a chondral and an osteochondral lesion because the difference is sometimes lost in the literature. In the context of treatment of injuries of the knee joint cartilage, the second-generation autologous chondrocyte transplant is a consolidated surgical method alternative to other techniques. Our experience with the transplantation of chondrocytes has had exceptional clinical results. We report 2 complete cases of a group of 22 in knee and ankle. These 2 cases had histological and instrumental evaluation. We cannot express conclusions, but can only make considerations, stating that, with the clinical functional result being equal, we obtained an excellent macroscopic result in both cases of second look. Autologous chondrocyte implantation (ACI) is a multiple surgical procedure with expensive chondrocyte culture, but even with this limitation, we think that it must be the choice in treating chondral lesions, especially in young patients.