New techniques for preserving natural joints

Team L&M

The 5^th International Congress of Indian Cartilage Society (ICS) held recently in Jaipur witnessed specialists discussing measures to ensure the health and longevity of human body’s natural joints for a long time with the help of cartilage regeneration and restoration.

In this two-day conclave, around 200 cartilage specialists from India and foreign countries like US, Britain, Poland, Hungary, Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan participated. Internationally acclaimed cartilage scientist Dr Bruce Ryder of US inaugurated the conclave. The main theme of this year’s conclave was Regeneration is better than Replacement.

Inaugurating the conference, Dr Ryder said new techniques of cartilage regeneration and restoration have triggered the hope that knee and other joints which become defective and worn out because of osteoarthritis and other causes may not be required to get replaced. Instead, natural joints should be repaired and rejuvenated through these new medical techniques.

Besides Dr Ryder, renowned international experts like Dr Jaikak Valvaski and Prof Raji participated in this conference. These experts deliberated on new techniques like articular cartilage implantation, stem cells therapy and scaffold.

In his presidential address, Dr Raju Vaishya, president, Indian Cartilage Society (ICS), dwelt upon various methods in India for treatment of injuries to cartilage. “The problem of arthritis among the youths has become extremely alarming now because it is leading to their knee replacement,” he said.

Dr Vaishya informed that the medical science is now blessed with new techniques in orthopaedics and it has now become possible to save the human body’s natural joints which have become defective by regenerating their tissues instead of replacing them with artificial joints.

Cartilage regeneration techniques developed in recent times help in forming natural cartilage; and because of this the need for replacement of a joint is either completely eliminated or it can be delayed. In particular, such types of techniques will be beneficial for the youth whose knee or other joints have become defective because of injuries to cartilage or due to arthritis, he pointed out.

US-based Dr Ajay Agarwal discussed about measures to preserve hip joints in youth. In this conference, stem cell therapy also came up for deliberations. Dr Saurav Mathur, organising secretary of the conference, said cartilage is an extremely important cellular component of the human body. It is a strong tissue but is softer and more elastin as compared to the bones. Cartilage is formed of special cells which are called chondrolysis, and these cells produce in large quantities collagen fibre, proteoglycan, and extracellular matrix compounds made of elastic fibres.

Dr Deepak Goyal, former president, ICS, informed that the tissues of cartilage have the potential to repair themselves, but this potential is extremely limited because it does not contain blood cells and blood is required for the healing process.

Dr Nishith Shah, also former president, ICS, said these days several new techniques are being used for regeneration of cartilage, and researchers are trying to develop new methods for production of cartilage which can help people get rid of severe pain from osteoarthritis and enable them to live a longer life with their natural joints.