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CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 · Indian J Radiol Imaging 2014; 24(03): 249-253
DOI: 10.4103/0971-3026.137035
Recent Advances in MSK

Imaging of cartilage repair procedures

Darshana Sanghvi
Department of Radiology, Kokilaben Dhirubhai Ambani Hospital, Andheri (W), Mumbai, Maharashtra, India
,
Mihir Munshi
Department of Radiology, Kokilaben Dhirubhai Ambani Hospital, Andheri (W), Mumbai, Maharashtra, India
,
Dinshaw Pardiwala
Department of Orthopaedics, Kokilaben Dhirubhai Ambani Hospital, Andheri (W), Mumbai, Maharashtra, India
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Abstract

The rationale for cartilage repair is to prevent precocious osteoarthritis in untreated focal cartilage injuries in the young and middle-aged population. The gamut of surgical techniques, normal postoperative radiological appearances, and possible complications have been described. An objective method of recording the quality of repair tissue is with the magnetic resonance observation of cartilage repair tissue (MOCART) score. This scoring system evaluates nine parameters that include the extent of defect filling, border zone integration, signal intensity, quality of structure and surface, subchondral bone, subchondral lamina, and records presence or absence of synovitis and adhesions. The five common techniques of cartilage repair currently offered include bone marrow stimulation (microfracture or drilling), mosaicplasty, synthetic resorbable scaffold grafts, osteochondral allograft transplants, and autologous chondrocyte implantation (ACI). Complications of cartilage repair procedures that may be demonstrated on magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) include plug loosening, graft protuberance, graft depression, and collapse in mosaicplasty, graft hypertrophy in ACI, and immune response leading to graft rejection, which is more common with synthetic grafts and cadaveric allografts.

Keywords

Cartilage - repair - magnetic resonance imaging


Publication History

Article published online:
02 August 2021

© 2014. Indian Radiological Association. This is an open access article published by Thieme under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonDerivative-NonCommercial-License, permitting copying and reproduction so long as the original work is given appropriate credit. Contents may not be used for commercial purposes, or adapted, remixed, transformed or built upon. (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).

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