Research on the Biology of Microvascular Bone Grafts

Abstract

More and more often the orthopedic surgeon must treat large bone defects due to bone tumors, resections, osteomyelitis, congenital pseudarthrosis, and post-traumatic bone defects that require large bone grafts. In these cases, conventional autogenous corticocancellous bone grafts can hardly solve the problem. Using vascularized bone grafts, which do not undergo creeping substitution, which heal swiftly, and which are not parasitic of surrounding tissues, yields better, safer and quicker results [2, 4]. To better understand the recovery of vascularized grafts as compared to conventional ones, research on rabbits has been done comparing the biological features of repair by means of scintigraphic, radiographic, and histologic methods [1, 3].