Table 3.

Study characteristics.

Reference	Intervention	Control	Study design	Number of patients		Mean age of patients (in yrs.)		Sex of patients (M/F)		Mean defect size (cm2)		Followup (months)	Loss to follow-up (% of pts.)
				I	C	I	C	I	C	I	C		I	C
Anders et al. 2013d	Arthroscopy + mini-arthrotomy, single-step cartilage repaira + MFx	Arthroscopic MFx alone	RCT	13|15	10	33|38	41	85|80/15|20	80/20	3.7|3.5	2.9	24	38|13	40
Sharma et al. 2013e	Mini-arthrotomy, single-step cartilage repair + MFx	Miniarthrotomic MFx alone	Non-RCTb	15	3	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	6	0	0
Shive et al. 2014f (Stanish et al. 2013g)c	Arthroscopy + mini-arthrotomy, single-step cartilage repair + MFx	Arthroscopic MFx alone	RCT	41	39	35	37	56/44	64/36	2.3	2.0	60	20	33

Abbreviations: I, intervention; C, control; RCT, randomised controlled trial; non-RCT, non-randomised controlled trial; vs., versus; N/A, no data; yrs., years; M/F, male/female; MFx, microfracturing.

^aStudy with two intervention groups: in one group, scaffold was sutured; in the other group, scaffold was glued into the affected area.

^bStudy was initially conducted as RCT. However, randomisation was stopped after only three patients were assigned to the control group. Study was then treated as non-RCT.

^cStudy results after 1 year were published in Stanish 2013 (assessing 41 vs. 37 pts.) and results after 5 years follow-up were presented in Shive 2014 (assessing 34 vs. 26 pts.). Therefore, data from both publications are presented together.

^dRef. 15.

^eRef. 18.

^fRef. 16.

^gRef. 17.