Outcomes of Bulk Fresh Osteochondral Allografts for Cartilage Restoration in the Knee
Bibliographic record
Abstract
BACKGROUND: Symptomatic osteochondral defects of the knee in young patients can cause substantial disability and predispose to osteoarthritis. Fresh osteochondral allografts (FOCAs) are a treatment option for such defects. With our institution having one of the longest-running FOCA programs, we investigated the long-term outcomes of bulk FOCA in the knee, focusing on graft survivorship, function, complications, and reoperation. METHODS: A total of 244 patients underwent bulk FOCA in the knee from 1972 to 2018, with a mean age of 37.8 years (range, 10 to 75 years) and a mean follow-up of 9.0 years (range, 1.0 to 29.8 years). Cartilage defects were very large and uncontained, such that they were not amenable to plug transplantation. Survivorship according to Kaplan-Meier analysis was the primary outcome, and failure was defined as conversion to total knee arthroplasty, repeat allograft, graft removal, knee arthrodesis, or amputation. Functional outcome was evaluated with use of the modified Hospital for Special Surgery (mHSS) score, and radiographic evidence of osteoarthritis was classified with use of the Kellgren-Lawrence grading scale. RESULTS: Graft survivorship was 86.6% at 5 years, 73.3% at 10 years, 58.1% at 15 years, 43.7% at 20 years, 31.9% at 25 years, and 22.6% at 30 years. The most common complications were pain (14.8%), malalignment (13.9%), and stiffness (5.8%). A total of 93 grafts (38.1%) failed at a mean of 11.0 years (range, 0.5 to 34.0 years). The mean mHSS score improved significantly, from 68.7 (range, 19 to 91) preoperatively to 80.3 (range, 52 to 100) at the time of the latest follow-up (p < 0.001). Preoperative mHSS score had a negative correlation with Kellgren-Lawrence grade at the time of the latest follow-up. Multivariate analysis revealed that graft location (i.e., medial-sided or multiple grafts) and increased age were significantly negatively associated with survival. Ten-year survival was >80% in patients below 50 years old, but <40% in patients >60 years old. CONCLUSIONS: Bulk FOCA provided promising long-term graft survival and functional improvement in patients <50 years old. It can delay or prevent the need for total knee arthroplasty in young patients. Older patients and patients with a medial-sided graft, or multiple grafts within the same knee, had a less favorable prognosis. LEVEL OF EVIDENCE: Therapeutic Level IV. See Instructions for Authors for a complete description of levels of evidence.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".