Bone Graft Methods and Options

The modern American medical industry is a truly vast one, and surgeons and doctors today can treat a massive variety of medical ailments for nearly any part of the body. This even includes a patient’s very bones, and modern devices for graft delivery are safer and more practical than ever. Bone graft surgery may be fairly low-risk when these devices for graft delivery are used, and a patient can choose between allograft and autograft surgery. Some patients even have artificial bone material injected into them, and most graft delivery devices can handle that, too. What should someone know about gone graft procedures and the options that a patient may have?

All About Bone Grafts

Today’s devices for graft delivery are simple handheld injector devices, convenient and easy for surgeons to use. The medical device market is a robust one, and nearly 40% of the entire world’s medical devices come from the United States, including those devices for graft delivery. Bone graft companies can offer wholesale injector devices, and hospitals can also acquire artificial bone material for patients who need it. Today’s medical device industry employs around 356,000 people across 5,800 companies, and that industry has a market value sitting at $140 billion.

Why do Americans need surgery on their bones? Many reasons exist, but four in particular appear to be the most common. Many patients need bone grafts for multiple fractures that did not heal correctly, or they need bone grafts to help two bones heal across a damaged joint. In other cases, a patient needs bone transplants to regenerate material after an injury or disease, and finally, some patients get bone surgery to heal bones after medical device implantation. If a patient needs bone surgery, their doctor will advise them on how to prepare ahead of time, and the patient may have more than one option for how the procedure will go. A 16-year study recently concluded, and it showed what sort of transplants patients preferred. During that study, 83% of two million total bone grafts involved autogenous bone materials that the surgeons harvested from the patient, and 17% involved surgery with artificial bone material. During that same study, there was a trend from traditional bone materials to substitute materials. Still, a patient today may choose whatever option they like, should it be viable.

Bone Surgery Methods

When devices for graft delivery are used on a patient, the materials inside can come from a variety of sources. Some operations are autografts, and others are allografts. Autografts involve bone tissue from the patient’s own body, and this means extra incision sites and more surgery, and thus more risk. But this way, living bone tissue of the correct blood type is guaranteed, and doctors will choose bone tissue from non-vital parts of the skeleton. There is also no risk of the body rejecting the material, since it is not foreign.

An allograft, meanwhile, involves bone material that came from someone else’s body. If possible, bone material from a concurrent patient in the hospital may be used, such as from someone who just underwent an amputation. But it is also common for hospitals to have bones in cold storage, and draw from these stockpiles for patients who need allograft bone surgery done. A donor will, with their consent, have their bones harvested and put in cold storage, if their bones are free of diseases or other problems. Such bone material no longer has marrow, so matching blood types will not be a problem.

After bone surgery is done, the surgeons may add implanted medical devices, such as plates, screws, and wires, to help keep the new bone material in place and allow the body to heal and become stable. During this time, the patient’s mobility might be somewhat limited, but unless there is a complication, their skeleton and thus their mobility will be be restored to a fully functional state.