[Vital preservation of cartilage transplants with tissue culture methods]

Cartilage grafting is one of the most common procedures in plastic surgery. Since storage of both autologous and allogenic cartilage is necessary, different preservation methods have been used with more or less success. The use of chemical preservation procedures like formaldehyde, Merthiolate or Cialit lead to a loss of the vitality of the graft. This work presents a study of the cell vitality and the matrix of cartilage grafts stored in different solutions (formaldehyde, saline, RPMI 1640, Ham F-12 and DMEM 4500) during 150 days. The cell viability was assessed using tissue sections (neutral red supravital staining and trypan blue dye exclusion test) and isolated cells (trypan blue dye exclusion test and cell adhesion in monolayer culture). The state of the cartilage matrix was analysed by means of the azan, alcian and toluidine blue staining). Cartilage immersed in formaldehyde solution lost 100% of the vitality after a storage period of 10 days, the one immersed in saline solution after 30 days. Cartilage stored in tissue culture media retained its vitality (> 85%) during the whole storage time. Histological staining methods showed a decrease of the staining intensity after 10 days storage in formaldehyde and after 30 days storage in saline solution. No differences in vitality and the matrix staining were found among all three culture media. Our results suggest that viable cartilage tissue can be successfully stored for a long time using tissue culture methods.