Harvesting of cartilage, cell culture, and seeding of biomaterials.

The auricular cartilage biopsies were weighed prior to cell isolation after thorough cleaning and sectioning. After cell isolation cell number was determined. After amplification cell number was increased 676× after passage two or three. There were no significant differences between test and control group; p = 0.881 (weight of cartilage biopsy), p = 0.766 (cells isolated), p = 0.655 (amplificated cell number); Mann-Whitney Test (two-tailed).