Comment on Medial Meniscus Scaffold Implantation in Combination with Concentrated Bone Marrow Aspirate Injection: Minimum 3-Year Follow-Up

Monday, 9 November 2020

We read with great interest the study by Akkaya et al[1] titled “Medial Meniscus Scaffold Implantation in Combination with Concentrated Bone Marrow Aspirate Injection: Minimum 3-Year Follow-Up” in the “Journal of Knee Surgery.” The authors should be praised for their well-designed study and exciting results.

The Actifit polymer is a slowly degrading polymer with polycaprolactone and urethane segments. The degradation process is expected to take approximately 5 years.[2] Despite preclinical studies have proven the beneficial effects of the implant with regard to knee function, pain reduction, and restoration of activity levels and shown re-population of the implant through short-term biopsies, the persistence of magnetic resonance imaging abnormalities at 2 years[3] and also 5 years[2] [4] suggests that the meniscus has not fully matured. However, we found that the scaffold had the same shape and iso signal intensity as native meniscus.[1] We speculated that intra-articular bone marrow aspirate concentrate injection may be beneficial to tissue growth and maturation.[5] However, the author did not analyze and discuss it. Therefore, we are interested in the morphology and size of the scaffold as well as the signal intensity of the scaffold. If possible, we hope the author could provide more detailed data and explain this result. The data can therefore be used to help guide clinicians when faced with treatment decisions relating to a patient who has a symptomatic segmental medial meniscus lesion.

Read Full Text - http://dx.doi.org/10.1055/s-0040-1721037