In my experience this is best achieved with using operating microscope and to check in histology slides in pilot study that all cartilage is removed in the defect area. This is also close to what is done clinically when performing cell transplantation in which you have to trust your surgical skills in order to separate cartilage at the tidmark above the subchondral bone. This is a very important research question and a problem in many of the experimental studies using cartilage defect. All motorozied defect creators would sometimes take to much and other times too little. There is also interindividual differences between the experimental animmals that further make in difficult to define a depth of the defect in articular cartilage.

Dear Asbjørn Årøen,

You are right. I did the procedure on 2 animals but at one depth only which exposed the marrow area. This time I am planning to make three defects in a row of 1mm dia of different depths. It is going to be 0.6mm and upwards. To keep accuracy is a challenge.

Many thanks,

Subhash

Dear Subhash

These articles may be useful for you

1) Allogenous bone with collagen for repair of deep osteochondral defects.

Schleicher I, Lips KS, Sommer U, Schappat I, Martin AP, Szalay G, Schnettler R.

J Surg Res. 2013 Dec;185(2):667-75.

2) Role of autologous chondrocyte transplantation in articular cartilage defects: An experimental study

Amit Rastogi, Pradeep Srivastava,1 Zafer Iqbal, Vinay Kumaraswamy, and Ravindra Pratap Singh

Indian J Orthop. 2013 Mar-Apr; 47(2): 129–134.

3) Rabbit articular cartilage defects treated with autologous cultured chondrocytes

Brittberg M, Nilsson A, Lindahl A, Ohlsson C, Peterson L. .

Clin Orthop Relat Res. 1996;326:270–83

Thanks, Nelson,

That is a great help, I will look these papers,

Best,

Subhash

Dear Subhash

It was my pleasure

Best