Autologous bone marrow graft and treatment of delayed and non-unions of long bones: Technical aspects

This article reports the technique of percutaneous autologous bone marrow injection as a minimally invasive method alternative to open grafting techniques in the treatment of delayed unions and non-unions. Despite continuous advances in the treatment of long bone fractures, disturbances of healing processes remain a difficult challenge for orthopaedic surgeons. Percutaneous administration of substances with osteoinductive and osteogenic properties offers the advantage of decreased morbidity associated with the classic open grafting techniques. This makes it worth exploring before embarking on more extensive open surgery. The authors present the main technical stages of the percutaneous bone marrow grafting (bone marrow aspiration, concentration, intra-osseous re-injection and post-operative protocol) with a short literature review about this topic.