Ver/Abrir - Repositorio Digital - Instituto Politécnico Nacional

IV. ABSTRACT
Background. Meniscus injuries represent the most common cause of arthroscopic
surgery. Meniscectomy is a well-known risk factor for developing osteoarthritis
(OA) of the knee. Meniscus transplants improve patient’s symptoms, but up to day,
there is no evidence for delay the onset of knee OA. The main objective of this
work is to generate a bioengineered meniscus implant, based on cell cultures to
prevent the development of knee OA and to compare the efficacy and safety of
different surgical procedures (bioengineered meniscus implant and autologous
meniscus transplant) through the assessment of OA lesions, in a Sufolk sheep
model. Main results, suggest that there is no solid evidence for the prevention of
Knee OA with any of the procedures evaluated (meniscus transplant,
bioengineering meniscus implant). However, the tissue found in bioengineered
implants showed better ultrastructural features than that in autologous meniscus
transplants. Minor complications in different surgical techniques such as
arthrofibrosis, effusion and synovial hypertrophy were present, suggesting that
there is a need to refine the surgical technique and peri-and postoperative
management. Conclusion. There was no evidence of condroprotective effect of
any of the surgical procederes evaluated in this study. We were able to recover
meniscal tissue from our bioengineered implant.
XIII