THE INFLUENCE OF LOW LEVEL INFRA RED LASER THERAPY ON THE REGENERATION OF CARTILAGE TISSUE
Lasers Surg Med.
P.Lievens , Ph.van der Veen
7/2/2003
-
This study concerns the influence of Laser treatment on the regeneration process of cartilage tissue. There is no need saying that the regeneration of cartilage tissue is a very big problem in rheumatic diseases for example. The lack of blood supply is one of the most important factors involved. Lots of previous publications give us proof of the regeneration capacities of Laser therapy (in wound healing, bone repair etc.) In this study we have chosen to experiment on cartilage tissue of the ear of mice. We are aware of the fact that the elastic cartilage tissue of the ear is not totally comparable with the hyaline cartilage of articulations. For technical reasons however and because of the fact that the chondrocytes are comparable, we decided to use mice ears in our experiment. A 0,4 mm hole was drilled in both ears on 30 mice. The right ears remain untreated, while the left ears were treated daily with IR-Laser (904 nm) for 3 minutes. Macroscopical as well as histological evaluations were performed on the cartilage regeneration of both ears.Our results show that after one day postsurgery no differences were found between the irradiated and the non-irradiated group. After the second day, only in the irradiated group there is a clear activation of the perichondrium. After four days, there is a significant ingrowth of the perichondrium into the drill hole in the experimental group and there is only an active perichondrium zone in our control group.