Assessment of Donor Site Morbidity after Non-Vascularised Fibula Bone Grafting

Introduction: Fibula has been used as a bone graft in different reconstructive Orthopaedic procedures viz, core decompression, limb salvage surgery in giant cell tumour of distal end radius, like a strut graft for bone defects etc. Despite this widespread use of fibula, there is very limited literature available on the donor site morbidity. The purpose of our study is to assess the complications related to bone grafting site of the fibula that we have encountered after these graft had been obtained and to evaluate morbidity following free fibular bone grafting. Materials and Methods: The study was performed at tertiary centre after taking necessary approval from institutional ethics committee. We conducted a Prospective and Retrospective Study from January 2015 to August 2019, comprising of 54 patients with a mean age of 34 years who underwent 60 free fibular grafting, with follow up at 1 month and 6 months. The results were evaluated by 2 subjective functional validated scores - ?Point Evaluation System And Visual Analogue Score? and radiological analysis. Study design: Prospective and retrospective cohort study. Results: The study included 78% males and 22 % females and the most common indication for taking graft in our study was AVN femoral head. Comparison was done between VAS and PES score using Pearson correlation coefficient (p value less than0.05) and the mean PES score was 2.56 Conclusion: Harvesting fibular strut graft is not without complications. On the basis of our clinical observation we found that most common morbidity at the end of 6 months is pain followed by functional loss and muscular weakness. Donor site Complication can be minimized by following standard protocols and meticulous soft tissue dissection.