Abstract
Articular cartilage lesion is a common disease to be treated by arthroscopic surgery. It will eventually progress to osteoarthritis without proper management, which can affect patients’ work and daily life seriously. Although mechanical debridement and laser have been used clinically for its treatment, due to their respective drawbacks, radiofrequency has drawn increasing attention from clinicians as a new technique with more advantages. However, the safety and efficacy of radiofrequency have also been questioned. In this article, the scope of application of radiofrequency was reviewed following an introduction of its development history and mechanism, and the methods to ensure the safety and effectiveness of radiofrequency through power and temperature control were summarized.
Highlights
Articular cartilage (AC), a kind of hyaline cartilage covering the articular surface, is a viscoelastic connective tissue composed of chondrocytes and the extracellular matrix (ECM), while ECM is mainly composed of collagen, aggregated proteoglycan and water (Maly et al, 2021)
Radiofrequency has been proposed as an effective method for the treatment of cartilage lesions
More effort is needed to include other indicators such as T2 Mapping, which can be used to evaluate the status of cartilage in vivo, to further confirm the safety of radiofrequency
Summary
Articular cartilage (AC), a kind of hyaline cartilage covering the articular surface, is a viscoelastic connective tissue composed of chondrocytes and the extracellular matrix (ECM), while ECM is mainly composed of collagen, aggregated proteoglycan and water (Maly et al, 2021). Chondroplasty is an effective surgical option for the treatment of AC lesions (Barber and Iwasko, 2006; Gowd et al, 2019) This technique debrides the fibroblast cartilage in the joint to form a smooth and stable articular surface to avoid further degeneration caused by delamination, fragmentation and fibrillation of the injured AC. Mechanical debridement has been used to debride and smooth the damaged articular surface, but this method usually removes adjacent normal cartilage while treating focal lesions. It cannot completely smooth the surface of cartilage, which will cause fibrillation on the cartilage surface, leading to further degeneration (Turner et al, 1998; Spahn et al, 2016). The development history, parameter control, biological research, clinical research, indications, and complications of radiofrequency were comprehensively reviewed
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