What to do about a dropped bone graft.

Autogenic bone graft operations are common. Although it is not often mentioned, most orthopedic surgeons are aware of instances in which the graft has been dropped on the operating room floor. The current forms of sterilization cause damage to the graft and loss of its advantages over allograft bone. To determine the amount of contamination incurred when the graft is dropped, surplus bone specimens from 50 orthopedic and neurosurgical procedures were dropped on the operating room floor and submitted for culture. Fifty controls were obtained from the same cases. No positive cultures were obtained from either study group. These findings offer objective evidence that extensive sterilization of a dropped graft is not essential.