SEMINAR
Joint Preservation In Orthopaedics

Treatment of tissue and articular cartilage lesions remains a challenge for the practicing orthopaedic surgeon. A wide range of options are currently practiced, ranging from conservative measures to various types of operations and, recently, use of growth factors and emerging gene therapy techniques. Also a great number of operative options are available from simple arthroscopic interventions, marrow tapping techniques, osteochondral auto/allo-grafting to cell-based techniques. At present, autologous cell therapies, growth factor techniques, stem cells and biomaterials offer more promising avenues of research to find clinical answers.

The basic idea, to adjust treatment to the individual patient, and to repair related and/or contributing problems before or with the final treatment, due to the multifactorial aetiology of these lesion modalities, should be considered under strong scientific evidence and innovative techniques well documented and explained.

The Athens Summit, organized by the Regenerative Medicine Orthopaedic Society, comes to bridge the gap between the theory and practice of all the above, with state of the art lectures, round tables and procedures, and through the collaboration of World, European and International scientific societies, creating the first consensus approach to these techniques and applications. Guidelines and state approval policies, ethics and rehabilitation are also, a significant part of this event, aiming for contributing to the new era of regenerative medicine in orthopaedics, tissue reconstruction and joint preservation.