Introduction
The term 'transplant' is now in household use - almost modern, hi-tech, adventurous. In most minds it applies to heart, or liver, or lung - the soft tissues associated with life and death situations. In fact, transplantation is applicable to any organ in the body, including bone, cartilage, or tendon. Musculoskeletal transplantation actually appears in the bible! One might say that orthopaedic transplantation is thus the first transplant technique described in history.
If tissue, of whatever nature, is moved from one part of an individual's body and placed elsewhere in the same body, this is known as an autograft. An example would be bone grafting of a fracture that has failed to unite where bone can be taken from the pelvis of a patient and placed into the fracture site. Removing tissue from one individual and giving it to another individual, albeit of the same species (man-to-man, dog-to dog, etc.) is called an allograft. Transplanting tissue between different species is referred to as a xenograft and between identical twins as an isograft. The different types of graft each have a place in modern orthopaedic surgery, though the isograft is more a laboratory technique than of widespread use in clinical practice. It will not be considered on this website. However, without musculoskeletal transplantation, much of orthopaedic surgery would be impossible