Effect of postoperative radiation on the incorporation of tibial bone grafts in the rabbit.

A dose of 48 Gy of X-irradiation given over two to five weeks after grafting caused no significant delay in the rate of healing and only a small and statistically non-significant decrease in the torsional strength of the graft-bone junction of either vascularised or non-vascularised bone grafts of the tibiae of rabbits. Healing was faster and the union between the graft and adjacent bone developed torsional strength significantly more rapidly with vascularised than with non-vascularised grafts. These findings suggest that postoperative radiotherapy is unlikely to have a significantly deleterious effect on the healing of bone grafts used to repair defects produced by excision of malignant bone tumours.