A New Injectable for Plastic Surgery

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Don’t look for it in the coming months, but a preparation on the medical horizon, injectable cartilage, may be able to speed some reconstructive and cosmetic plastic surgery procedures of the face.

Already, athletes at all levels are looking forward to the release of the new substance to treat the Achilles heel of sport injuries, torn cartilage.

In plastic surgery, experts predict the substance will be used as an all-purpose clay to mold new cartilage outside the body for use in building new ears and noses through injections.

Here’s how it works, according to researchers at MIT and Harvard Universities: physicians extract the patient’s own cartilage-producing cells and mix them into a newly developed and patented gel which is based on hyaluronic acid. Then, they inject the mixture into an injury site or wherever it’s needed for plastic surgery.

Hyaluronic acid is the prime ingredient in Juvederm and Restylane.

So far, the engineered cartilage injectable has been tested on animals.

In one experiment, cells from cartilage structures inside the human nose were mixed with other types of growth cells and then injected into mice.

The researchers then harvested the injected areas at various times from 14 to 38 weeks and studied the samples, using several types of biochemical analysis. Results? 93 percent resembled natural cartilage.

Printed in the January-February 2008 issue of Archives of Facial Plastic Surgery, a professional journal for plastic surgeons, the researchers concluded: “Injected, autologous cartilage may be the answer to the long search for the ideal implant in facial plastic surgery.”

“Autologous” means the donor tissue comes from the patient’s own body. Read more about the research for this possible facial injectable.)

Michael Jackson, are you paying attention? Can you hang on just a couple more years until this marvelous substance is widely available?

admin @ April 2, 2009