STACi vs OATS (Mosaicplasty): Two Ways to Rebuild Cartilage

OATS (mosaicplasty) takes small plugs of your own cartilage and bone from a non-weight-bearing part of the joint and transfers them into the damaged area — mature cartilage, moved in one operation. STACi instead grows your own cartilage cells on a 3D scaffold and places that into the defect. OATS is limited by donor supply and suits small-to-moderate defects; STACi takes no donor plugs and is built for larger damage.

Yes. OATS is a genuine option at LCC, from £14,000, and STACi is from £28,000, all-inclusive. Which one suits you depends on the size, depth and location of your cartilage damage and how much healthy donor tissue can be spared. The consultation exists to make that choice honestly, not to push one procedure.

Donor-site morbidity means pain or problems at the place healthy tissue was taken from. Because OATS harvests cartilage-and-bone plugs from elsewhere in the joint, that donor area can occasionally become symptomatic. STACi takes no donor plugs — nothing healthy is removed — so there is no donor site to cause problems. That is one reason STACi can suit larger defects, where OATS would need to borrow more tissue.

Larger defects tend to favour STACi. OATS is capped by how much donor cartilage the same joint can spare, so bigger areas can be hard to resurface with plugs. STACi’s scaffold-based regeneration is not limited by donor supply and is designed for larger, more complex damage. For a small-to-moderate defect, OATS remains a strong option. An imaging review settles it.

For STACi, recovery is staged: protected weight-bearing on crutches for six to eight weeks, early range-of-motion with physiotherapy, low-impact activity from four to six months, and higher-impact sport from nine to twelve months depending on the defect. OATS rehabilitation follows a broadly similar protected pathway. See the STACi recovery timeline for the detail.