Cultured Cells Injected to Repair Knee (Biloine Young @ OTW)
Faced with a patient with a severely disabling injury on her left knee, doctors at JPN Hospital in New Delhi successfully performed their first “third generation autologous chondrocyte implantation.” According to the report in The Hindu, doctors used the patient’s own cultured cells to repair damage to the cartilage in her knee.
“This advanced surgery is being probably done for the first time in any government set-up in the Capital and we are proud to announce that the patient is recovering well,” said Professor in-charge of the sport injury and arthroscopy unit, Department of Orthopaedics, Vinod Kumar.
Explaining the procedure Kumar said: “The patient injured her knee while participating in a dance program in August 2011 at her home town in Uttar Pradesh. Her knee developed swelling and she had constant pain. They brought her to this hospital in Delhi and after investigations we found that the patient had damaged her cartilage of the knee joint which doesn’t repair by itself.
“Since the patient was very young we decided that she is suitable to undergo this latest procedure where healthy cartilage cells are taken, grown and reintroduced into the injured area to repair it. In this case we performed an arthroscopy procedure where natural cells from the cartilage were taken and these were transported by a private company to Korea where these cells from the patient’s knee were cultured, processed and grown and then delivered back to our hospital.
“We got four vials of the cultured cells with each vial containing 12 million cells which when introduced would, we believed, repair the damaged cartilage of the knee. This procedure was performed on the patient on February 11 and the patient has been kept under observation at the hospital,” said Kumar.
The patient, who is still admitted to the hospital, is recovering well and, according to Kumar, “after the operation we are sure that the girl will be able to go back to her normal life,” he said. He added that the hospital has trained a group of doctors to conduct the cellular repair procedure.