1. Bone-Grafting Crash Course
Bone grafting is a surgical procedure performed by your doctor in which she takes new bone or replacement material and places it into spaces between or around your broken bones, or fractures. You doctor also puts the new bone or replacement material into holes in the bone, called defects, to help heal your bone. Bone grafting helps repair fractures that are complex and expose you to risk or fractures that are old and have failed to heal properly. Your doctor uses bone grafting to fuse vertebrae and provide support for the spine. Bone grafting repairs defective bone from birth defects, injury or cancer.
2. Heal My Bones
There are three ways bone grafting helps heal your bones. The first one, called osteogenesis, uses new bone with the cells in the graft to heal your bone. The second one, called osteoinduction, uses molecules in the bone grafting to convert cells incapable of forming bone to make bone. The last one, called osteoconduction, uses the graft itself to form a base for the new cells to start forming and healing your bone. Bone taken from your body is called an autograft. An allograft uses frozen bone or a replacement material. Your doctor makes an incision in your skin over your bone and then fits the bone grafting into place. The bone grafting gets screwed or pinned into place and then your doctor sews your skin closed.
3. Care for My Bones
Your healing time depends on how severe the bone grafting performed. You are in a cast or splint to help lessen movement and to allow the bone grafting to heal properly. After your doctor performs an x-ray to confirm the bones have healed, your doctor removes the cast or splint and gives you approval to return to normal activity.
4. Risks Associated With Bone Grafting
Risks associated with autografts include the additional procedures to harvest the bone to use in the bone grafting. These procedures add time and money and have the potential for pain and infection from the harvest site. Risks associated with allografts are the potential for rejection, because the bone is foreign to your body. Your doctor prescribes anti-rejection drugs to help your body tolerate the bone grafting. These allograft bone replacements could also contain diseases that could be passed on to you.
5. Proof It Works
The success rates vary depending on what type of bone grafting takes place, how healthy you are and how well your body accepts the new bone or bone replacement.
