How far away are we to the tissue-engineering ear still? —A clinical report on the 3 cases of ear reconstruction with tissue-engineering cartilage framework / 中华整形外科杂志

ABSTRACT

Since a long time ago, tissue engineering has always been one of our important research fields in ear reconstruction. Professor Yilin Cao et al published their paper＂Transplantation of chondrocytes utilizing a polymer-cell construct to produce tissue-engineered cartilage in the shape of a human ear＂in 1997. Since then, the following studies have made some progress in the areas of seed cell culture and scaffold preparation. Depending on decades of clinical experiences of ear reconstruction with autologous rib cartilage framework, we analyzed the blood supply condition and mechanical properties of the framework after transplantation to the recipient area. And we put forward the idea of harvesting microtia cartilage as the source of seed cells in Stage 1 surgery. Yilin Cao team, in cooperation with us, constructed the tissue-engineered cartilage framework in the shape of patient′s normal ear with seed cells from microtic cartilage and PCL-PGA-PLA compound bioscaffold.We performed the world′s first case of ear reconstruction with tissue-engineered framework in 2014. The surgical method was ear reconstruction with skin expansion. We treated 2 more cases using the same techniques in 2015 and 2016. Since the framework implantation, the first case has been followed up for 43 months, the second 28 months and the third 14 months. We reported the treatment and clinical observations of the three cases in details as follows for clinical reference.