Spontaneous healing of large cortical defects in long bones: Case reports and review of literature

Bone heals well when the fragments are in full contact and this occurs in ideal situation when there is close fracture. But this is not always the case. High velocity fracture is open most of the time and treatment of such fracture is always challenging [1]. Open fracture needs wound excision and sometime needs trimming of bone end which leads to gap formation in the bone. Such type of gap rarely heals without any intervention [2]. The gap may be filled with cancellous bone, strut graft, cortical graft or with segment transport [3,4]. Segment transport may be bifocal, trifocal or tetrafocal depend on the condition of the bone and size of the gap [5]. For large gap, cortical graft like fibular graft or segment transport are widely used procedures which are technical demanding and time consuming procedures [6]. We present two cases without any head injury in which a large gap in bone was filled and healed without any intervention. © 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.