Medicina (Jun 2024)

Effectiveness and Complications of Bone Marrow Aspirate Concentrate in Patients with Knee Osteoarthritis of Kellgren–Lawrence Grades II–III

  • Ji-Hoon Baek,
  • Su Chan Lee,
  • Dong Nyoung Lee,
  • Hye Sun Ahn,
  • Chang Hyun Nam

DOI
https://doi.org/10.3390/medicina60060977
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 60, no. 6
p. 977

Abstract

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This study aimed to identify the effectiveness and potential complications on the harvest site and knee of bone marrow aspirate concentrate (BMAC) treatment of patients with Kellgren–Lawrence (K–L) grades II–III knee osteoarthritis (OA) over a minimum follow-up period of 6 months. This study retrospectively evaluated data from 231 patients (285 knees) with knee OA treated with BMAC articular injection at a single center from August 2023 to October 2023. The inclusion criteria were a longstanding knee pain unresponsive to conservative treatments for at least 6 weeks with K–L grades II–III OA. The exclusion criteria were age of 80 years, previous knee surgery, rheumatological or other systemic disease, malignancy, uncontrolled diabetes mellitus, or infections. Bone marrow was aspirated from the anterior iliac crest and concentrated by the single-spin centrifugation technique. The visual analog scale (VAS) pain score and Knee Society Score were used to evaluate the clinical outcomes and complications associated with harvest and injection sites were evaluated. The mean follow-up period was 7.2 months (range: 6–8 months). The pretreatment VAS pain score decreased from 4.3 to 0.4 points at the final follow-up (p p p < 0.05), respectively. A total of 15 complications (5.3%, 15/285) were observed, including 3 hematomas, 2 numbness, 2 contact dermatitis, and 1 superficial infection in the harvest site and 4 mild and moderate swelling and 3 severe swelling and pain in the injection site. BMAC is a reliable and effective treatment for patients with K–L grades II–III knee OA, but the orthopedic surgeon should consider that bleeding tendency by heparin causes severe joint swelling and pain after intra-articular knee injection.

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