. 2015 Dec;229(12):879–888. doi: 10.1177/0954411915615470

Table 1.

Overview of current surgical methods for the treatment of osteochondral defects in the knee.

Surgical treatment	Advantages	Limitations
Arthroscopic debridement and lavage	Arthroscopic or minimally invasive	Progressive deterioration Recurring symptoms
	Cost-effective	Progressive deterioration Recurring symptoms
	Short rehabilitation time
Microfracture or marrow stimulation	Cost-effective Surgically reproducible	Fibrocartilage formation
	Cost-effective Surgically reproducible	Partial defect filling
		Functional deterioration after 18–24 months⁴
Osteochondral autograft transplantation and mosaicplasty	Restoration of hyaline cartilage articulating surface Good chondrocyte survival rateGood clinical results at medium long-term follow-up⁵	Lack of cartilage integration
		Poor matching of graft and host cartilage congruency
		Donor site morbidity
		Limited tissue availability
		Potential chondrocyte apoptosis during graft impaction^6,7
Osteochondral allograft transplantation	Restoration of hyaline cartilage articulating surface	Potential immunological response and disease transmission
	Treatment of large defects	Limited graft availability
	Good long-term clinical results and graft survival⁸	Potential chondrocyte apoptosis during graft impaction^6,7
Autologous chondrocyte implantation (ACI) and matrix-assisted ACI (MACI)	Arthroscopic or minimally invasivePotential for hyaline cartilage repair tissue Use of autologous cells	Expensive
		Two-stage procedure
		Variable repair tissue type: hyaline like, fibrocartilage and mixed⁹
		Limited defect filling and integration¹⁰