Bone grafting
Also called: bone graft surgery
What it means
Bone grafting is a surgery that adds bone or bone-like material to help fix a gap, break, or weak spot in a bone so it can heal and rebuild properly.
If you ever break a bone that struggles to heal, understanding bone grafting helps you follow your surgeon's recovery plan with confidence.
Bone grafting is a surgical procedure that places new bone material, or a bone-like substitute, into an area where bone is missing, damaged, or needs to heal and grow together. It's used to fill gaps from fractures that won't heal properly, to support spinal fusion, to fix bone loss from infection or tumors, or to help hardware like implants anchor securely.
The graft material can come from the patient's own body (often the hip), from a donor bone bank, or from synthetic or lab-processed substitutes. Over time, the body's own bone-building cells grow into the graft, slowly replacing it with the patient's living bone through normal bone remodeling.
Recovery depends on the location and size of the graft, and may involve weight-bearing restrictions, bracing, or physical therapy while the area heals. Any decisions about whether bone grafting is needed, and which type of graft is best, belong to the orthopedic surgeon managing the specific injury or condition.
Bone grafting adds material to help a broken or weak bone heal and rebuild properly.
Where this leads
WordGrafting often isn't done alone. See the hardware-based surgery, ORIF, that frequently pairs with it for fragility fractures.
Related words
ORIF stands for "open reduction internal fixation." It's a surgery where a surgeon repositions broken bone pieces…
Internal fixation is surgery that uses metal rods, plates, screws, or wires placed inside the body to hold a broken…
A nonunion is a broken bone that has stopped healing and won't knit back together on its own, even months after the…
Spinal fusion is a surgery that permanently joins two or more vertebrae together using bone graft and hardware like…
Bone union means a broken bone has fully healed and the two ends have knit back together with new bone, restoring…
Fracture healing is the body's natural, staged process of repairing a broken bone, moving from initial bleeding and…
Education only, not medical advice. Decisions about tests, medications and treatment belong with your own doctor. OsteoStrong does not diagnose, treat or cure any disease.
