Today, surgical procedures are excellent treatments for cartilage damage in many cases. It should always be left to an experienced doctor to decide which procedure to use in the individual case.

In minor damage, a joint debridement, for example (cartilage trimming), associated with joint washout, can be helpful. For defects of up to about 2 cm2, a microfracture can be considered. If the bone is also affected, mosaicplasty can be useful for damage of up to about 3 cm2, while chondrocyte transplantation is an option for an area of up to 10 cm2.

To obtain satisfactory results, it can also be important, depending on the findings, to combine the interventions with a surgical correction of the leg axis or to reconstruct the cruciate ligaments or the meniscus. In this way one-sided stress on the joint can often be reduced and new damage to the cartilage prevented.

If the arthritis is so severe that biological procedures (microfracturing, mosaicplasty, chondrocyte transplantation, etc.) are now out of the question, the implantation of an artificial joint (joint replacement) can be a useful therapeutic option.