[Cell culture and orthopedic surgery. 1. Principles, methods, fundamental applications]

Many reasons, in 1996, may incite orthopaedic surgeons to take an interest in cell culture. Firstly, cell culture bring informations on bone cell physiology, and the physiological properties of the skeletal cells are involved in the success of the orthopaedic surgeon's act. Secondly, in orthopaedics field's literature, more and more articles using cell culture techniques are published and surgeons need some basic knowledges to understand these results. Then, in the first part of this work, we detail the essential rudiments; vocabulary, cell culture methods, and cell physiology notions. In the second part of this work, we resume the progress realized these last years with cells cultured from the skeleton. Using these informations, surgeons will be able to appreciate the potential uses of cell cultures for diagnosis, biomaterial evaluation and for the development of new therapies.