Human articular cartilage during osteoarthrosis: a study under the scanning electron microscope.

The present study has been carried out with the aim of contributing, by means of the Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM), to the understanding of morphological changes in human articular cartilage during osteoarthrosis. Fragments from the femoral head of 10 patients subjected to total hip joint prosthesis were cryofractured and then studied by SEM after treatment with current procedures. The images obtained were considered observing the division of cartilage into superficial, medium and deep layers. The superficial layer is the one which suffers most seriously during osteoarthrosis, but collagen alterations, as fibrillation, involve all the layers together. Moreover, the observation of deformed cellular lacunae in the deep layer suggests that a precocious functional collapse involves the whole thickness of the cartilage, probably due to a metabolic suffering.