London Cartilage Clinic
Explore expert articles on cartilage care, regenerative treatments, and practical recovery advice from our specialist team.
Kneecap pain that worsens reliably around menstruation reflects three converging biological mechanisms: fluctuating oestrogen alters soft tissue laxity and cartilage protection, whilst systemic prostaglandins lower pain thresholds across joints already under mechanical stress.
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.
