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Osteochondral transplant system

Project Overview

Current osteochondral graft surgical procedures repair articular cartilage defects on the femoral condyle using impaction for insertion of the allograft into the recipient site. The forces associated with impaction has a detrimental affect on the chondrocyte viability within the cartilage layer and can cause long-term failure of the allograft. Therefore, we proposed a novel design that utilized threading of the allograft and the recipient site for delivery through rotational means rather than impaction. A live/dead stain and confocal microscopy were used to assess cell viability across untreated, threaded, and impacted groups throughout two rounds of testing with porcine tissue samples. Using ImageJ, percent viability values for each sample were calculated
at varying distances away from the surface. Average percent viability values for the impaction and threaded groups were used in a 2-sample Welch t-test resulting in p-values of 0.387 and 0.458 for the first and second round, respectively. Hence, the statistical analysis does not show that there is a difference in viability between the impaction and threaded groups. Furthermore, the large variance in viability can be accredited to the negative effects that the extraction procedure alone had on the health of the cartilage. The tool used for threading the bone samples required the application of various magnitudes of possibly detrimental torsional forces and was also observed to damage the cartilage on the outer diameter of the samples. The observed damage to cartilage during threading does not allow us to recommend this novel procedure.

Team Picture

Team members from left to right: Nicholas Zacharias, Eduardo Enriquez, Rodrigo Umanzor
Team members from left to right: Nicholas Zacharias, Eduardo Enriquez, Rodrigo Umanzor

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Contact Information

Team Members

  • Rodrigo Umanzor - Team Leader
  • Eduardo Enriquez - Communicator
  • Nicholas Zacharias - BSAC & BWIG
  • Bilin Loi - BPAG

Advisor and Client

  • Dr. Kris Saha - Advisor
  • Dr. Brian Walczak - Client

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