Evidence / Sources / E18
Kunze KN et al. High Rate of Return to Sport for Athletes Undergoing Articular Cartilage Restoration Procedures for the Knee. AJSM 2025
Evidence strength 4 of 5
Systematic review + meta-analysis · n = 52 studies / 2,387MACI ITSELFFull text →What it can tell you
The pooled return-to-sport picture across cartilage procedures: 80.3% returned, with MACI carrying favourable odds of returning at the same or greater level.
What it cannot
What 'return' means — most component studies never defined it, none used measured criteria, and procedures, sports and levels are pooled together.
Everything on this site that leans on E18 — 9 claims
Stage V · Impact“What actually happens: pooled return to sport across cartilage procedures is about 80%, professional athletes 84% — in a dataset that was less than 4% female — and pivoting sports …”Stage V · Impact · Questions“What specifically do you want to see before you clear me to run — and how much of it is measured rather than dated?”Program · Stage V (patellofemoral)“Sport, tier by tier — Pooled return to sport across cartilage procedures runs about 80% — but in pivoting sports the range is 33–96% returned, and most studies never defined "retur…”Program · Stage V (patellofemoral) · Gates“Each sport tier entered on clearance that was measured, not dated”Program · Stage V (tibiofemoral)“Sport, tier by tier — Pooled return to sport across cartilage procedures runs about 80% — but in pivoting sports the range is 33–96% returned, and most studies never defined "retur…”Program · Stage V (tibiofemoral) · Gates“Each sport tier entered on clearance that was measured, not dated”Exercise Library · Returning to sport“Pooled return to sport after cartilage repair procedures is about eighty per cent, but in pivoting sports the reported range runs from a third to nearly all patients returning, wit…”Benchmarks · return-to-sport“80.3% returned (CI 73.3–86.5) at pooled across studies — Meta-analysis, athletes across cartilage restoration procedures”What we don't know · № 05“Return-to-sport figures pool a 33–96% range, and most of the studies never defined "return".”
Read it like a sceptic
Heterogeneous inputs pooled to one confident-looking number; the confidence interval (73–87%) is the honest part.
Population
Athletes, all cartilage procedures
Selection policy
Sources enter the registry through docs/research — the evidence table records design, population, and size for every entry, and pages cannot cite anything outside it.