Juvenile cartilage transplants are a revolutionary new way of treating patients with deteriorated cartilage. The treatment not only resolves pain, but also helps restore natural cartilage tissues within the affected joint.
What are Juvenile Cartilage Transplants?
Juvenile Cartilage Transplants is a surgical procedure used to graft the cartilage of a juvenile donor to the affected area in hopes that the cells will proliferate and rejuvenate a patient’s cartilage. The procedure is done under general anesthesia, but requires only a single surgery and a very small incision. Furthermore, many juvenile cartilage transplantations can be done very quickly – requiring about one hour to complete. Some patients can go home immediately following the operation, though some orthopedists prefer to monitor patients overnight.
All juvenile cartilage donors are under age 13 – a time when cartilage naturally regenerates very rapidly in the body. The harvested cartilage tissues are grafted directly into the joint, or cells may be otherwise collected for laboratory cultivation prior to surgery.
A healing and recovery period follows every juvenile cartilage transplant, and some patients may require post-operative physical therapy to help strengthen the affected joint. However, juvenile cartilage transplants are almost always successful, and many patients report feeling little or no pain at all in the weeks and months following the procedure.