WCAX.COM Local Vermont News, Weather and Sports-Promising new technique for knee pain

November 16, 2011

The simple movement of swinging her legs up and down used to be agony for Kasia Platt.

"The pain would wake me up at night," she said. "I would be in pain basically all the day."

A childhood injury damaged her knee and a failed surgery made it worse. That's what brought her to the office of Dr. James Gladstone, an orthopedic surgeon at Mount Sinai Hospital. What Gladstone found was damage on the bottom side of an otherwise healthy kneecap. It made Platt a perfect candidate for a cutting-edge surgery-- carving out the damage and replacing it with healthy cartilage harvested from a cadaver.

"Over time it binds to the underlying bone of the defect and then to the cartilage surfaces around the defect so that it forms a new cartilage layer," Gladstone explained.

The transplant only works in patients who still have healthy cartilage the cells can bind to. That new layer can head off future arthritis and years of discomfort.

Doctors say once you injure the cartilage in your knee it doesn't heal. And as that cushion wears away, it exposes the nerves and the bone, causing the pain. Using a donor's cartilage, doctors can recreate a smooth surface, so the joint can bend and rotate without pain. But finding a donor isn't always easy. For the transplant to be effective, it has to come from someone under the age of 13, which is when the cells are most active.

"If we're trying to recreate cartilage, we'd like something that's going to produce it as abundantly as possible," Gladstone said.

Platt says she's grateful to the donor's family because she can once again enjoy a walk in the park-- pain-free.

Donor cartilage can also be used to treat damage to the shoulder and ankle joints.