The incidence of glenohumeral chondral defects reported incidentally at arthroscopy has been within the range of five to 17%. As microfracture has been used in knee surgery, this study was designed to determine the effect of this procedure on patients with articular cartilage defects at the glenohumeral joint.

This retrospective review included consecutive patients with chondral defects of the humeral head and/or glenoid who received microfracture surgery after failed conservative treatment. Participants were contacted by phone for postoperative assessments, including a visual analogue scale (VAS) for pain, the Single Assessment Numeric Evaluation (SANE), subsequent surgery, willingness to undergo the surgery again, the Simple Shoulder Test (SST), the American Shoulder and Elbow Surgeons (ASES) form and the Short Form-12 (SF-12). The average follow-up time was 10.2 years.

Of the 13 patients available for follow-up, three had progressed to failure, with 10 available for follow-up questionnaires. The adjusted VAS scores were significantly improved at long-term follow-up as compared with baseline (P＝0.004), as were scores on the ASES (P＝0.009) and SST (P＝0.009). Survivorship was 93.8% at one year, 87.5% at three years and 76.6% at nine years.

This study of patients with shoulder joint chondral defects, treated with microfracture, found a reoperation rate of 28.6% and a long-term clinical failure rate of 24.2%.