Abstract:

BACKGROUND: Bone defects caused by trauma, infection and bone tumor and other causes are difficult to self-healing, and at present, the treatment is mainly depend on bone transplantation. Allogeneic bone transplantation is different from real organ transplantation, allogeneic bone transplantation induced immune rejection is relatively small, and so it can be widely used in clinical surgery. 
OBJECTIVE: To review the application of allogeneic bone transplantation in the treatment of bone tumor, traumatic bone defects and spinal lesions.
METHODS: A computer-based search was performed on the PubMed database and CNKI database from January 1983 to January 2011 for the biomechanics articles relate to application of allogeneic bone transplantation in the treatment of bone diseases. The key words were “bone allograft, bone transplantation, repair, bone defect” in English and Chinese. The repetitive articles and the articles not in English or Chinese were eliminated, and finally, a total of 34 articles were included to review.
RESULTS AND CONCLUSION: Allogeneic bone transplantation as the clinical method to repair the bone defects has been widely used for the repair of the bone defects caused by fracture and bone tumor resection, as well as the spine and joint disorders. Although, allogeneic bone transplantation has the disadvantages of bacterial and viral infections, fractures, nonunion, delayed union, and other disadvantages, it has some advantages in the repair of bone defects, such as similar structure to autogenous bone and lighter rejection response, and there is no damage caused by autogenous bone transplantation and extending of the operation time. All the advantages make the bone allograft become the commonly used material for repair of bone defects.