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Damage to articular cartilage by acute or chronic injury causes pain and limits knee function. If left untreated, damage to the articular cartilage may further progress down a degenerative pathway, resulting in painful osteoarthritis. Physicians and scientists have been frustrated for decades by the inability of damaged articular cartilage to heal itself as it lacks both a blood supply and an appropriate population of repair cells. Today’s techniques for treating chondral or osteochondral defects commonly include microfracture and transplantation procedures. Microfracture involves puncturing the subchondral bone to stimulate blood flow to the defect area. Transplantation techniques utilize the patients own tissue (autograft) or cadaveric tissue (allograft) to replace damaged tissue. These techniques typically provide a temporary relief by creating a fibrocartilaginous repair that is biomechanically and biochemically inferior to normal articular cartilage. Additionally, concerns remain about limited graft availability, morbidity at the autograft donor site, graft hypertrophy, the need for multiple surgical interventions, excessive cost or limited surgical locations. These current techniques, though beneficial in temporarily reducing patient pain, cannot truly be considered successful long-term solutions.

Kensey Nash Corporation’s Cartilage Repair Device received the CE Mark in February 2010. The device is designed to address many of the deficiencies found in today’s cartilage repair procedures. The Cartilage Repair Device (CRD) is a unique synthetic bioresorbable implant designed to address chondral and osteochondral defects. This CRD technology utilizes a biphasic design that contains two discrete layers, each specifically engineered to favor the growth of the histologically distinct tissues of articular cartilage and subchondral bone. The chondral phase consists of a unique Type I bovine collagen matrix that provides a malleable, flexible substratum that allows cell infiltration and de novo formation of hyaline tissue. The subchondral phase consists of b -TCP (tricalcium phosphate) mineral suspended within a porous bioresorbable synthetic polymer scaffold. This matrix provides an appropriate mechanical and chemical environment to facilitate the influx of cells and remodeling into normal bony architecture, an important component in a successful cartilage regeneration effort.

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