Knee Meniscus Injury: Insights on Tissue engineering Strategies Through Retrospective Analysis and In Silico Modeling

Abstract

The present work focuses on three main aspects such as (1) extent of surgically managed human meniscal injury problem among the selected population (patients underwent meniscectomy), (2) viability of meniscus cells (isolated from surgical debri) at different age groups, and (3) simulation studies on model scaffolds to understand the biomechanical aspects. Thus, this study gives insights on the severity of the knee meniscus injury in the selected region and tissue engineering aspects which can in turn help in the design and development tissue-engineered construct for the regeneration of damaged tissue. Total 1025 patients (who underwent knee surgery related to meniscal injuries) data were collected from 2012 to 2015. With available additional data, main population was subdivided into two subpopulations. Retrospective and predictive statistical analyses using different statistical tools were performed for gender, age groups, causes of injury, symptoms, pre-treatment symptomatic duration, location of injury, and treatment given. Medium active persons with 23–28 BMI had shown more meniscus damage occurrences in subpopulation 2 (n = 316). 125 meniscus surgical debrises were collected and cells were isolated from the samples to analyze the cell count in each age group. This study showed that as age increases, cell viability was found to be decreased. In this study using simulation studies, the stress distribution against varying applied load was analyzed using COMSOL MULTIPHYSICS (version 4.3b). For this study, two different model scaffold systems were used such as poly(methyl methacrylate) (PMMA) and silicone. This approach can be a strong foundation for the development implantable scaffolds with biomechanical properties comparable to human meniscus.