Dr. Brian Cole, professor and vice chairman of orthopedics at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago, said it’s hard to predict a prognosis for such surgeries because they’re “extremely rare” in elite athletes, who usually try microfracture operations before allograft transplants are even considered.
Cole, who wasn’t involved in Trevathan’s operation or treatment, said there just isn’t enough data like there is with other knee surgeries such as ACL repairs “to predict how they’ll do with a relative amount of certainty.”