Morphological Investigations of Osteochondral Allografts

Abstract

For the last several years, bone allografts have been the subject of renewed interest as materials for restoring skeletal continuity after limb salvage surgery. This new impetus to allograft has been especially advanced by the cryoprotection of cartilage [1]. As the matrix results from the synthetic activities of cells, the survival of chondrocytes would retard or prevent matrix degradation that occurs in nonliving cartilage. Nonetheless, whether cryoprotection is effective in preventing long-term, cartilaginous matrix loss due to implanted osteochondral allografts remains unknown. It has been reported in the literature [1] that about 30% of the chondrocyte population can survive after freezing cryoprotected cartilage. However, experimental data only concerns small animal joints that are not comparable to a human joint. As our bone bank currently uses cartilage cryoprotection, it was necessary to evaluate first the cell survival effect of such treatment on a large human joint after prolonged storage.