Professor Steinwachs, you are a renowned orthopedic surgeon specializing in cartilage repair in knee injuries, especially in athletes. What are particular challenges in sports-related injuries of the knee compared to a knee, ligament, and cartilage injuries in non-athletes? The main point is that the athletes have finally a much higher load and mechanical activities in the regenerative tissue at all. So, in cartilage regeneration, we have a higher load after the rehabilitation in those cases. So it’s very important to restore a high quality of cartilage tissue because otherwise, the athletes are not able to return to sport. Compared to normal people, we can use regenerative techniques for cartilage repair, which allowed 100% activity but not 150% activity. And this is the main point. The other point is a time window for rehabilitation. Because athletes need to come back to sport earliest and as fast as possible. That’s true. On the other point, the regenerative process in humans needs time. Maturation for cartilage to come up and high quality, in the end, to allow sports needs time too. So you have to define the good technique, which allowed the highest quality of cartilage. And you need a very excellent rehabilitation to avoid overloading too early and protect the healing process in a good way and allow it a stepwise increase in activity. So this is, I would say, one of the critical points.
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