cadaver bone

[Guest guest]

Using cadaver bone is normal procedure to use it to allograft a femoral ring

from cadavers to use in the spine is a good fit to replace removed bone from

osteotomies and then the ring is place into the spine and filled with a

bone paste usually made from your own bone from a rib due to the large

amout of fusion mass needed for the anterior posterior procedures. The

allograt ring from cadavers are irradiated to be free of any disease an any

living organism.. dead dry bone. it provides a support fro the bone fusion

paste to adhere to and grow new bone throughout that area which will

eventually fuse solid 90% at end of year one and be completely fused 100% at

end of year two. There may be specific instances of non fusion due to some

medical conditions which only your doctor could explain but smoking and

other such things increase risk of poor fusion and so do use of steroids as

well during the first year and anti inflammatory drugs. Once any hardware is

in place in your body you should tell all your doctors including dentists

you have implants because any infection can run rampant and will target

itself to go right for any foreign object in the body such as hardware and

if your hardware is infected the only solution is remove it and this is a

bad situation all around. You don't want to go there. This is serious and

the risk of infection going to hardware is a lifelong risk and should be

remembered for the rest of your life. I have had ER nurses yell at me saying

they have never heard of such a thing as I am telling them when I had a skin

infection to get me on an antibiotic fast as my leg was swelling and they

didn't see the urgency until i request an orthopaedic consult and then the

SH*T hit the fan and the ortho resident told the nurse off as I was right

and her 20 years of experience was wrong. So remember that. ANY infection of

your body has the potential to go straight to your hardware and I would not

ever want to risk having to have your spine anterior posterior ripped open

and torn apart to try and clean out some infection. So better to be

proactive and not even risk it. So educate yourself and your medical team.

Just because they are not aware of it doesn't mean it doesn't exist or is

not true. It is a true fact for us. So good luck. I know it sounds gross

having a dead body part in our body but it adds a strong stability that we

need to help maintain a good fusion. It took me a few years to get past the

morbidity of thinking about it. about 5 years I guess. My 3 surgery same day

11 hour revision was oct 1998. Keep the faith and be strong. It takes time

to heal and have the patience to wait it out and don't rush the healing

process.

cheers

Kathleen in NJ

wishing you many peaceful moments

TwistedSister in NJ

1982 Scoliosis Harrington fusion, 1998 Revision A/P Surgery for Flatback

Syndrome, 1998 Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, 1999 Degenrative SI Joints,

2000 Weight Loss Surgery, 2000 Spinal Hardware Removed, 2001 Cervical

bulging discs, 2002 Arachnoiditis, 2002 GERD, 2002 Adhesions, 1993 Mitral

Valve Prolapse, 1996 Fibromyalgia, 2001 Kidney Stones,

2003 Interstitial Cystitis, May 2003 Anterior spine hardware removal

** LIFE IS UNCERTAIN.............EAT DESSERT FIRST **

Harrington Rod scoliosis people and other post-op multiple spine surgery

people may interested in the following website dedicated to Flatback

Syndrome and revision/salvage spine surgery... " Salvaged Sisters of

Scoliosis " website on Delphi Forums at:

http://forums.delphiforums.com/adultscoliosis/messages