Group,
New to this site but really struggling. My son (baseball/football player) has been having ankle pain. The MRI revealed a 3cm lesion on the inside part of his talar dome. This was uncovered by our podiatrist who is trained in foot/ankle and does surgeries.

My problem is this. He sent me off to get a second opinion. And the second opinion was wildly different approach from the first. The podiatrist recommends the approach of using cadavar cartilage to fill in the crack and glue over. The orthopedist is recommending the OATS(?) procedure which is the microfracturing of the area to create scar tissue to fill it in.

I am hearing different things about the agressiveness of one method over the other and the ortho approach being more conservative but maybe winds up at a second surgery if it doesn't work.

In short, I am very unsure about next steps. Who should I have do what procedure? Ortho or podiatrist? The ortho we saw today is wanting to operate next week! Both are saying this will never heal on its own. I am getting a third opinion next week also with a different ortho but who knows what that will bring.

Any and all recommendations are very much appreciated.

Len