What Is a Connective Tissue Graft?

Each piece of skeletal muscle is divided into two parts, the muscular abdomen and the tendon. The muscular abdomen is composed of muscle fibers. It is soft in color and red and has the ability to contract. The tendon is composed of dense connective tissue. The tendons of the long muscle are mostly round cables, and the tendons of the broad muscle are broad and thin, showing a membrane shape, also called aponeurosis.

Each piece of skeletal muscle is divided into two parts, the muscular abdomen and the tendon. The muscular abdomen is composed of muscle fibers. It is soft in color and red and has the ability to contract. The tendon is composed of dense connective tissue. The tendons of the long muscle are mostly round cables, and the tendons of the broad muscle are broad and thin, showing a membrane shape, also called aponeurosis.

Chinese name

tendon

Function

Traction bone

Pronunciation

j jiàn

Location

Muscular abdomen

Tendon tissue structure

1. The tendon is the connective tissue fibrous cord at the end of the muscle, by which the muscle attaches to bones or other structures. The tendon is tougher and smaller than the muscle. Its expansion strength is 611 to 1265 kg / cm2. The tendon is mainly composed of parallel collagen fiber bundles and has no contraction ability. Its surface is covered with connective tissue membrane, and a small amount of connective tissue is connected between collagen fibers. Although the collagen fiber bundles that make up the tendons are parallel to each other, each collagen fiber bundle is intertwined, so the tensile force of the muscle fibers is transmitted to the entire tendon instead of a single tendon bundle.

2. The sources of tendon blood flow are :

There are more blood vessels entering the tendon in the tendon-muscular transition;

There are a few branches of the blood vessels adjacent to the bone or periosteum of the tendon attached to the tendon;

In unsheathed areas, blood flow comes from the tissue around the tendon;

There is a synovial sheath, and the blood vessels of the tendon are distributed to the tendon through the mesangium.

3. The compound three-dimensional cultured tendon cytoskeleton is parallel to the long axis of the scaffold fiber, and the cell curls and wraps the scaffold fiber. The nuclei of tendon cells are located on the fiber side. Tendon cells grow in layers around the fibers, similar to the distribution of tendon cells above living tendons.

Tendon- related diseases and treatment

Due to the excessive use of tendons or age degeneration, tendons will produce different degrees of acute and chronic injuries. Chronic rotator cuff injuries increase sharply with age. Surveys show that 13% of the elderly in the 50s have rotator cuff injuries, increase to 20% in the 60s, and 31% in the 70s . After repairing the damaged tendon, there will be problems such as adhesion and reduced strength, so it is particularly important for the treatment of damaged tendon. The traditional treatment of tendons mainly includes sutures, autograft, allografts, synthetic materials and so on. With the advancement of biotechnology, growth factors, stem cells and gene therapy have also made great progress. Treatment measures include suture, autograft, allograft, growth factor therapy, stem cell therapy and gene therapy.

Tendon clinical technique

The hand flexor muscles are damaged. After suture or key transplantation, the function of the fingers is often affected due to the formation of dense adhesions, which leads to surgical failure. Therefore, retaining the nutritional supply of transplanted muscle health is of great significance to prevent postoperative muscle health adhesion. The repair results of graft muscle after injury are different depending on its nutritional status. In the case of nutritional deficiency, necrosis occurs inside the graft. With the formation of adhesions to surrounding tissues, surrounding connective tissues invade, cell planting, Grafting regains blood supply and produces healing, that is, the graft key heals through the action of "crawl replacement". In the case of sufficient nutrition supply, the transplant key survives, repairs and heals like normal tissue. The fascial pedicle muscle key transplantation transforms the traditional face graft healing process into a purely broken end healing process. The time required for key healing is shortened, adhesion formation is reduced, and the curative effect of surgery is improved. The results of clinical application of fascial pedicle graft also confirmed this conclusion. In fascial pedicled iliac transplantation, the transplanted muscle key can obtain a certain blood supply through the connection with the fascial tissue, avoid the ischemic degeneration process of the transplanted belly, and facilitate the early healing of the ridge. In addition, because there is blood flow in both the transplanted muscle key and the damaged muscle key stump, it can also shorten the time required for healing of the graft touch and reduce the formation of adhesions.