Abstract
Purpose: There are various materials for filling the cage of the lateral lumbar interbody fusion (LLIF), and each material has different ability of bone fusion. Although the autogenous bone grafts have a better bone fusion ability, it has a problem of postoperative donor site pain such as a fracture. Since 2019, the demineralized bone matrices (DBM) have become available in Japan. This time, we investigated the early postoperative interbody fusion using both DBM and bone marrow aspirates in the LLIF cage.
Subjects: The subjects were 7 patients and 14 intervertebral discs that underwent LLIF at our hospital from April 2019 to December 2019. In all cases, DBM and bone marrow aspirates from the iliac bone were mixed, and fixation from the posterior was performed percutaneously. Bone fusion was evaluated by CT images 6 months after the operation.
Results: Bone fusion with the upper and lower endplates appeared on 3/14 intervertebral space (21.4%).
Discussion: LLIF often causes postoperative donor site pain. Although it has been reported that the long-term fusion rate of artificial bone and autologous bone graft or allografts is not significantly different from that of autologous bone graft, the facilities where allografts can be used were limited in Japan. DBM is expected to be a new option as allografts that can be used in any hospital. In this study, we were able to avoid donor site pain by using both DBM and bone marrow aspirates, but the fusion was not as good as that of artificial bone graft or autogenous bone grafts in the short term.
