Dr. Jeffrey Gladden explains how surgeons can safely harvest cartilage from the intercondylar notch during ACL reconstruction. The notch reliably regrows after being widened for the graft, making it an ideal donor site for cartilage repair without harming the patient.
Yeah, so the articular cartilage donor material comes from the intercondylar notch where the ACL goes through the knee. And the reason we know that we can take it from there is when we were doing ACL reconstructions, we realized that we had to widen the notch often in order to fit the new ACL graft in place, and the notch always grew back. And so we knew that we wouldn't hurt the patient by harvesting a plug from the intercondylar notch.
