Does harvesting of iliac bone grafts with an acetabular reamer reduce complication rate?

Autogenous bone grafts are often used in orthopaedic surgery. One of the well-known techniques to obtain the grafts from either the anterior superior or posterior iliac spine uses a classic acetabular reamer. This retrospective study searches for the frequency of complications and discomfort in a population of 78 patients after this kind of bone graft harvesting. Data were collected by means of mail questionnaires. All possible major and minor complications such as haematomas, infections, pain and sensory alterations were investigated. We had no major complications. We only found minor sensory and pain complications. We were able to procure large amounts of cancellous bone graft through this method. This method of cancellous grafting reduces the rate of major complications, but there is no difference in the occurrence of postoperative pain as compared with standard techniques. The minor sensory complications are comparable with other methods of iliac spine harvesting. When performing iliac spine bone harvesting procedures,good knowledge of the nerve anatomy is of prominent importance.