Evidence / Sources / E24

Harris JD et al. Failures, re-operations, and complications after autologous chondrocyte implantation. Osteoarthritis Cartilage 2011

Systematic review · n = 82 studies / 5,276 subjects / 6,080 defectsMACI ITSELFFull text →

What it can tell you

Failure and reoperation rates across 5,276 ACI patients — around 5.8% failure overall, a third reoperated for any reason — and the number this site leans on hardest: mean time to failure 22 months. Feeling good at six months proves little.

What it cannot

MACI-specific rates: the pooled data spans all ACI generations, and 'failure' is defined inconsistently across its inputs — the same inconsistency that produces the scary 0–42% ranges quoted elsewhere.

Everything on this site that leans on E24 — 14 claims

Stage V · Impact [patellofemoral]“Swelling or pain that climbs after impact sessions rather than settling by morning. And a quieter trap: feeling good at six months is not proof of durable success — mean time to gr…”Stage V · Impact [tibiofemoral]“Swelling or pain that climbs after impact sessions rather than settling by morning. And a quieter trap: feeling good at six months is not proof of durable success — mean time to gr…”Stage VI · Long horizon“Neither the tissue nor the risk is finished at year one: repair-tissue texture is still measurably changing at 24 months, and mean time to graft failure is around 22 months. The kn…”Stage VI · Long horizon [patellofemoral]“A new effusion, catching, locking, or a step-change in pain in a previously settled knee. Failure clusters around the second year, not the first months — late change is a reason to…”Stage VI · Long horizon [tibiofemoral]“A new effusion, catching, locking, or a step-change in pain in a previously settled knee. Failure clusters around the second year, not the first months — late change is a reason to…”Program · Stage V (patellofemoral) · Slow down if“Swelling or pain that climbs after impact sessions rather than settling by morning. And a quieter trap: feeling good at six months is not proof of durable success — mean time to gr…”Program · Stage V (tibiofemoral) · Slow down if“Swelling or pain that climbs after impact sessions rather than settling by morning. And a quieter trap: feeling good at six months is not proof of durable success — mean time to gr…”Program · Stage VI (patellofemoral) · Slow down if“A new effusion, catching, locking, or a step-change in pain in a previously settled knee. Failure clusters around the second year, not the first months — late change is a reason to…”Program · Stage VI (tibiofemoral)“Year two, on purpose — Knowing late change is possible is a reason to be seen when the knee changes, not a reason to expect it.”Program · Stage VI (tibiofemoral) · Slow down if“A new effusion, catching, locking, or a step-change in pain in a previously settled knee. Failure clusters around the second year, not the first months — late change is a reason to…”Exercise Library · Second-year vigilance“Across a large systematic review of implantation failures the mean time to graft failure was around twenty-two months, repair tissue was still maturing measurably on imaging at twe…”What we don't know · № 21“The research this site rests on names the post-operative warning signs and attaches a number to none of them; the one number on the red-flags page, a temperature, comes from clinic…”Why this · Why this is the point most people stop, and the evidence says not to“Failure in this operation is not usually an early event — the mean time to graft failure across a large pooled series was around twenty-two months, and repair tissue was still meas…”Why this · Why year two is the one to watch“The mean time to graft failure across a large pooled series was around twenty-two months, repair tissue was still measurably changing on imaging at twenty-four, and the randomized …”

Read it like a sceptic

2011 review — periosteal-era techniques inflate the complication picture relative to current MACI.

Population

ACI, knee

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.