Autologous drill dust bone graft a novel technique of bone graft harvesting

Abstract

This paper, describes a novel technique of graft harvest from the drill site during plate osteosynthesis of fractures of upper limb. The grafts harvested are corticocancellous chips which we prefer to name as 'Drill dust'. This drill dust usually goes wasted as surgeons tend to ignore to collect the drilled out bone which is usually washed out during or after the procedure. We decided to collect these drilled out bone in a meticulous and systematic manner and found that they form a significant amount of bone to be used as a graft at the fracture site which can potentially enhance fracture union. We did a study utilising our technique assessing clinical and radiological union in a subset of patients undergoing upper limb fracture plate osteosynthesis between July 2018 to Jun 2019. We found that there was an enhanced radiological and clinical union in all 28 of our cases where this technique was used. There were no complications noted with the procedure.