INFLUENCE OF BLADDER TRANSPLANTS ON THE HEALING OF DEFECTS OF BONE

Abstract

Having been interested in the problem of osteogenesis and the healing of bone we were attracted by the work of Huggins,¹who showed that if the mucous membrane of the bladder was transplanted to the subcutaneous tissue of dogs the transplant tended to produce a cyst lined by bladder epithelium, and true bone tended to be formed in the wall of the cyst. It occurred to us that epithelium from the bladder might stimulate osteogenesis in defects in bone and cause union to occur in defects which would normally result in nonunion. In this article we report experiments in which relatively large defects in bone in the ulnas of dogs were bridged by transplants of the mucous membrane of the bladder of the same animal. <h3>REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE</h3> The literature on heteroplastic formation of bone and especially on formation of bone in the genito-urinary tract has been reviewed