Single-Surgery Co-Implantation of Autologous Primary Articular Chondrocytes with Bone Marrow Cells in the Treatment of Articular Cartilage Lesions: Observations from the Operating Room on Tissue Input and Cell Output

Single-surgery variants of autologous chondrocyte implantation to repair cartilage are emerging, but practical data on such procedures are scarce. We set out to describe a 1-stage autologous chondrocyte co-implantation procedure and include quantitative characteristics of the biopsy tissues collected and of the cells obtained from those tissues in the operating room.

Data concerning patient age, articular cartilage lesion size and location, as well as measurements of cartilage biopsy mass, bone marrow aspirate volume, and the cell yields harvested from those biopsies were intraoperatively collected for 141 patients.

The mean patient age was 35.7 ± 9.8 years, and the mean total lesion size was 4.0 ± 3.1 cm². Cartilage biopsy mass ranged from 0.19 to 2.0 gram and provided a mean yield of 1.23 × 10⁶ chondrocytes/gram. Bone marrow aspirate volume ranged from 7.2 to 62 milliliters and provided a mean yield of 7.18 × 10⁶ mononuclear cells/mL. The cell yields did not correlate with patient age, which ranged from 12 to 57 years. The mean primary chondrocyte supply was 272 thousand per cm² of lesion, ranging from 10.4 thousand to 1.07 million per cm². The total cell supply was kept at 9 million cells per cm² of lesion by adding mononuclear cells to the chondrocytes. The mean tissue processing time was 100 ± 19 minutes, which was frequently used to perform concurrent interventions.

Single-surgery co-implantation of clinically relevant numbers of autologous primary articular chondrocytes and bone marrow cells is feasible for a wide range of ages and lesion sizes.