[Cell culture and orthopedic surgery. II. Medical applications. Diagnosis, biomaterials evaluation, therapy].

Currently, cell cultures are used for 3 kinds of applications in orthopaedics: diagnosis: they can help to diagnose hereditary diseases like Marfan syndrome, osteogenesis imperfecta, or some osteochondrodysplasia. biomaterial evaluation: cell cultures bring information to ensure safety and efficacy of medical devices following the European Community's directive concerning medical devices. Results of in vitro biomaterial evaluation must be related to cell types (osteoblasts or fibroblasts), cell species (human or rat) and methods used (primary cell line or immortalised cell line). therapy: first clinical applications of cell cultures have been published recently. They concern cultured autologous chondrocytes reimplantation. Bone cells cultured on biomaterials have been tested in animal reimplantation experiments. Animal cells mediated gene therapy experiments are now developed on muscle cells. Cell cultures allow also to determine the best therapeutic way to cure bone tumors. For the moment, these applications are still limited but in the next years, they could develop considerably. Therefore, orthopaedic surgeons must keep interest in this new field.