The osteogenic effect of bone transplants in rabbits.

One of the main problems of bone transplantation has been the question of survival of cells from autografts and their capacity for bone formation. Puranen (1966) showed that fresh autografts of bone have a more intense uptake of tetracycline than autografts which have been exposed for one hour to air or kept for three hours in saline, and he suggested that the greater osteogenic power of fresh autografts was due to survival of bone-producing cells. This observation has been further studied in the present investigation, where bone production at different periods after transplantation was observed by labelling with tetracycline compounds. TECHNIQUE AND MATERIALS White rabbits three to four months old and weighing l5 kilograms were operated upon under Nembutal anaesthesia. The skin was incised along the iliac crest and the iliac bone was exposed by retraction of the muscles including most of the periosteum. A cylindrical bone graft consisting of outer and inner cortices and intermediate cancellous bone was taken with a hand drill. In some cases the bone grafts were replaced immediately; in others they were kept in saline or exposed to air for one hour before replacement. In similar experiments fresh autografts were transplanted to muscle tissue beneath the fascia on the back of the animals and in these cases processed cancellous heterogenous bone (“ Kiel bone,” Maatz and Bauermeister 1957) was inserted in the defect of the iliac bone. Finally, in some animals Kiel bone was embedded in muscular tissue. A prophylactic dose of penicillin (50,000 units) was given to each animal after operation.