Considering Carticel
My first surgery was for a cartilage tear. It was supposed to be a routine
procedure that I would recover from quickly and fully. However, my knee
never completely healed. I continued to have pain, off and on, for a year.
I finally went back to my doctor and he suggested an exploratory
surgery. This time I had a area of cartilage that had become delaminated
from the bone. My doctor drilled holes in the tissue, and told me that the
blood from the bone would help it reattach.
It has been three and a half months, and I still have the same pain I
did before the surgery. From what I read, it seems unlikely that the
cartilage will ever completely heal.
I am now considering the procedure offered by Genzyme Tissue Repair,
which uses the body's own cartilage cells to generate millions of similar
cells in the lab to reinsert them into the damaged area. What do you think
of this procedure? Am I a good candidate?
I'm 40, extremely healthy, and would like very much to resume some type
of exercise. I have been mostly inactive since the first surgery because of
the pain. The damanged tissue appears to be articular cartilage, attached
(sort of) to the femur.
From:
Linda Sellers - ljsellers@cs.com
