Local Hospital Speeds Bone Growth.

Surgeons have long sought a means to stimulate the growth and formation of bone. Thanks to a series of groundbreaking biomedical innovations, hospitals such as Glendale Adventist Medical Center are now utilizing a system to meet that need.

Irvine, California-based Interpore Cross International and a number of the nation's top hospitals and centers of medical excellence, including Glendale Adventist's have unveiled a bone growth acceleration system that is likely to change the face of bone repair. The finished product, Autologous Growth Factors (AGF), enables surgeons to literally speed the healing and growth process of human bone by hamessing the growth potential and properties present in a patient's own blood.

Interpore Cross developed AGF in an attempt to provide surgeons with a technology and procedure that would speed the bone healing process at a graft site. The AGF system takes its name from Autologous Growth Factors, a platelet-rich plasma derivative that is gathered by Interpore Cross' patented technology. Once gathered, the AGF material can be used as a fibrin glue for bone graft materials such as the marine coral-based Pro Osteon, and as a trigger for speeding growth and healing of the patient's bones.

Noted as one of the nation's foremost orthopedic surgeons, Philip Merritt, M.D. of Glendale Adventist said he is extremely pleased with the way the AGF procedure has helped his patients' bones literally heal "faster."

"During a bone graft procedure," explained Merritt, explaining how the process works, "a unit of blood is drawn from the patient and, using cell washer equipment routinely available in operating rooms, the blood is separated into several components. One of these components, known as the 'buffy coat,' is particularly rich in platelets. The buffy coat is removed and further processed while the remaining blood components are returned to the patient. The buffy coat is then passed through Interpore Cross' UltraConcentrator technology, which removes the water and concentrates the platelets and fibrin -- resulting in AGF."

"The AGF concentrate created by this process contains important growth factors and can be mixed with a bone graft material such as Interpore Cross' own marine coral-based Pro Osteon, providing the graft site with both a moldable gel as well as an osteoinductive material. Because marine coral possesses a porous structure very similar to human bone, Pro Osteon serves as an excellent, highly absorbable bone substitute."

Merritt reports that results to date reveal that by using AGF technology, growth factors contained in the patient's blood can be successfully concentrated and mixed with bone graft material intraoperatively, resulting in a graft matrix that can dramatically stimulate bone formation.