CELL-CULTURE AND ORTHOPEDICS .1. PRINCIPL ES, METHODS, FUNDAMENTAL APPLICATIONS

Many reasons, in 1996, may incite orthopaedic surgeons to take an inte rest in cell culture. Firstly, cell culture bring informations on bone cell physiology, and the physiological properties of the skeletal cel ls are involved in the success of the orthopaedic surgeon's act, Secon dly, in orthopaedics field's literature, more and more articles using cell culture techniques are published and surgeons need some basic kno wledges to understand these results. Then, in the first part of this w ork, we detail the essential rudiments : vocabulary, cell culture meth ods, 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 appr eciate the potential uses of cell cultures for diagnosis, biomaterial evaluation and for the development of new therapies.