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Chondral defect is a kind of defect which refers to focal area damage to the articular cartilage. This defect also damages the bone which is lying underneath the cartilage. Symptoms indicating this condition might not occur immediately in life but chondral cartilage defects are very common. Damage in the cartilage may occur due to injury or due to wear and tear over many years. However, there are people who happen to develop symptoms but do not develop osteoarthritis.
This can be attributed to articular cartilage possessing slow self-healing properties. Due to this reason, the management and the prevention of any chondral defect turns out to be challenging. Many treatments were brought into the light (for example, a shift has occurred from symptomatic treatment to structural cartilage regeneration) but all of them produced less satisfactory to poor results. Results of a few clinical trials demonstrated that cartilage defects caused by trauma, infection, congenital malformations and tumors were most commonly encountered in patients which, therefore, had a huge negative impact on the patient’s quality of life.
Due to advances in modern technology, cartilage tissue engineering has brought some good news for the patients who are going through such conditions. This review presented by Lin et al. attempts to familiarize readers with the preparation techniques and types of scaffold material which is used in cartilage tissue engineering which can be used to treat chondral defects.