London Cartilage Clinic
Explore expert articles on cartilage care, regenerative treatments, and practical recovery advice from our specialist team.
Mosaicplasty outperformed microfracture for knee cartilage defects in a decade-long randomised trial, with transplanted hyaline cartilage remaining durable whilst microfracture's fibrocartilage fatigued, explaining why initial equivalence dissolved between five and ten years.
ChondroFiller, an outpatient-injected acellular collagen scaffold, offers patients with advanced knee osteoarthritis an alternative to replacement by recruiting progenitor cells to repair cartilage, though candidacy requires mechanical joint stability.
Full-thickness knee cartilage defects—lesions down to bone—are repaired with cell-seeded scaffolds. MACI outperforms microfracture for defects of 3 cm² or larger; single-stage STACi achieves this in one operation rather than two.
ChondroFiller is a Class III medical device costing £3,000 per box at London Cartilage Clinic as an all-inclusive fee, with the collagen scaffold implant itself accounting for most of the expense.
The hip's labrum acts as a gasket seal, maintaining a pressurised fluid film; years of friction from bone shape deformities gradually tear it, and once torn, cartilage wear accelerates.
STACi addresses large or geometrically complex cartilage defects unsuitable for conventional two-stage cell-based techniques in a single operative session, using a three-dimensional scaffold that supports cell ingrowth across depth and surface.
