Brief note on Bone Grafting

Bone grafting is a surgical treatment that substitutes missing bone in order to mend complex bone fractures that offer a substantial health risk to the patient or do not heal adequately. Some mild or acute fractures can be treated without bone grafting, but big fractures, such as compound fractures, have a higher risk.

Bone has the ability to repair entirely, but it does so only with a very small fracture gap or a scaffold. Autologous (bone extracted from the patient’s own body, typically from the iliac crest), allograft (cadaveric bone received from a bone bank), and synthetic (generally constructed of hydroxyapatite or other naturally occurring and biocompatible compounds) bone grafts are available. Over the course of a few months, most bone grafts should be reabsorbed and replaced as the natural bone recovers.