

Any experiences of bone graft using donor bone?

(6 Posts)
sleepyhead Thu 15-Nov-12 23:18:44

Ds (5) has an aneurysmal bone cyst (full story here) in his arm which isn't resolving with treatment so far.

He's now going to have an operation to remove the cyst and will have the area packed with a bone graft. Originally the consultant had hoped to use ds's own bone, but he's too little and the consultant reckons that the risk outweighs the benefit so it will be donor bone instead.

The donor bone comes from hip replacement patients and they are tested for blood bone viruses before donation and 6 months afterwards. Apparently the risks are no higher that for blood transfusion.

But.. I'm worried about it, and I wish it wasn't happening (even though it means ds will only have one wound site so it's a much easier operation) and can't help thinking about stuff that's discovered years down the line re: transmission of viruses etc.

Any experiences that might help me come to terms with it? We will be going ahead anyway as we can't leave the cyst to grow and destroy more bone.

I suspect there won't be any replies to this - it seems to be a very rare thing that ds has so there's always lots of excited junior doctors wanting to have a look at ds and his arm every time we visit the

sleepyhead Fri 16-Nov-12 18:40:40


narmada Fri 16-Nov-12 19:31:08

Can they do bone grafts from you if you are a match? Or Your partner? I suppose No guarantees that your donation would be necessarily more problem free than an unknown donor.... just an idea. maybe its a ridiculous idea medically speaking....I have No idea!

I have no real experiences of this but...when I was 20 I had a bone graft from my hip to a cyst in my wrist. The hip pain was worse than the wrist pain in recovery, and my wrist is so much better now.

Not really what you asked but I hope it held anyway.

minmooch Fri 16-Nov-12 19:40:59

Can't help you I'm afraid but I totally understand the junior drs excitement - my son has a brain tumour rarely seen in kids over 8 (he's 16) and they can't wait to look at an interesting case. It makes me angry and sad - he's not an interesting case - he's my son - but they need to learn.

I hope it goes as well as possible.

sleepyhead Fri 16-Nov-12 20:04:41

Oh thanks for replying!

Last night I did a lot of digging around about bone donation and I feel a bit better about it. Apparently because it's not needed for life threatening conditions they're particularly strict about acceptance criteria and over 60% of prospective donors are rejected.

I don't know if they'd consider donation from family, but I'm pregnant and dh has had a blood transfusion so we'd be out anyway!

Henrietta, (unknown possible & improbably future scariness aside) it will make it a much easier operation for ds this way, so I have to hold onto that. Why make him have two scars when he needs one.

Minmooch, yes you hope they see the person first. Thinking of your son. I keep telling myself that we are damn lucky that, although very rare, this is not life threatening.

Because of where the cyst is with a v important nerve nearby, and ds's small size, the operation is going to be quite tricky. The consultant says it's going to be very interesting for him though. Big Fat Whoop hmm. He's a lovely, lovely man but I could have punched him when he said that.

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