Bone Healing after Implantation of Some Hetero- and Alloplastic Materials: An Experimental Study on the Guinea Pig

Abstract

The early treatment of children with clefts of the lip and palate has received much space in the literature. Primary bone grafting was introduced by Schmid (9) and Nordin and Johansson (8), and it has been maintained that bone grafting not only prevents maxillary collapse, but also creates the necessary conditions for normal growth of the middle third of the face. But only scanty information is available on the growth of the maxilla following such treatment. Skoog (10) tried the osteogenetic capacity of the periosteum by establishing continuity across the cleft with periosteal flaps from the bordering maxillary segments. He found this procedure to result in the formation of new bone in the alveolar cleft. In one of the cases described, subperiosteal pack— ing With hemostatic sponge was used and was believed to have contri— buted to the favorable formation of new bone in that case. In a later paper, Skoog (11) used subperiosteal packing with Surgicel and found it to have a very good effect on the formation of new bone. Whether the method with periosteal flaps (" boneless bone grafting ") also stimulates normal growth of the maxilla remains to be proved. In recent investigations, Stenstrom and Thilander (12) showed that autogenous bone graft from the iliac crest for filling a defect in the pre— maxillomaxillary suture in guinea pigs, 1 to 3 days old, resulted in a deviation of the nose towards the side of the defect and, hence, in marked asymmetry. Thus, the bone grafting does not seem to stimulate a normal growth of the facial skeleton. In connection with these experiments , which were begun in 1963, experimental studies were also carried