14/11/2011 12:00 AM 14 November – On the third day of the Medical Forums at Aspetar series, leading industry experts spoke about the current available options for cartilage treatment in athletes. Welcoming the guests, chief of surgery at Aspetar (Qatar Orthopaedic and Sports Medicine Hospital), Dr Philippe Landreau gave an introduction to the topic and focused on “Why treatment of cartilage defects in Sports Medicine is important and challenging”. “Cartilage pathology is one of our main concerns. Specifically, we are talking about cartilage defects and traumatology lesions, which are most frequent for young people and athletes,” said Dr Landreau. Cartilage plays a crucial role in an active person’s life and literally serves as a back bone to healthy and efficient movement of a body. Morphologically speaking, it is constituted of a number of layers with water as their main component, while the dry weight is composed of 45% of type II collagen and 35% proteoglycans. Cartilage cells represent less than 10% of total volume. The collagen fibres in the cartilage resist compression. Mechanical properties of the cartilage allow movement of the joint surfaces. “Despite mechanical properties, cartilage has weaknesses; It lacks blood vessels giving it a low spontaneous repair potential,” said Dr Landreau. And while development of surgical technology for cartilage is in full expansion, hyaline cartilage reconstruction remains the only long-lasting and viable solution for cartilage lesions, according to him. Dr Stefano Zaffargnini from the Sports Traumatology Excellence Centre of Instituti Ortopedics Rizzoli in Bologna, Italy then talked about “Treatment options for cartilage lesions: A global review”. “Many people think that we will not be able to regenerate cartilage and can only settle for repairs. This is not what we want to do. We want to regenerate the natural cartilage,” said Dr Zaffargnini. “We now understand that all cartilage lesions are not the same and demand individual course of action,” he added, before explaining various available and emerging options in treating cartilage conditions. The Medical Forums at the Aspetar were held over three days (November 12-14) and were aimed at shedding light on medicine in sports – which, despite the lack of public awareness, is extremely important to the industry as it keeps the athletes up and running. The three-day event brought together leading experts from around the world who spoke on a variety of topics. -Ends-