398 THE JOURNAL OF BONE AND JOINT SURGERY THE BACFERIOLOGY OF BONE ALLOGRAFFS

We report the contamination rate in the Cambridge bone bank of 35 consecutive allograft specimens, all harvested in a clean-air environment, using a strict aseptic technique and antibiotic cover. Five of 27 femoral heads taken from living donors and three of eight massive allografts taken from cadavers were found to be contaminated. The contaminated femoral heads were discarded. All massive allografts were rendered sterile by gamma-irradiation. Itisimportant to exclude bacteriological contamination of harvested and banked bone. Bone transplantation has a long history. The Saints Cosmos and Damien, a physician and surgeon respec-tively, beheaded in AD287 on the orders of the emperor Diocletian, are said to have replaced the tumorous lower limb of a churchwarden with the leg of a Moor who had died the same day (Mankin, Doppelt and Tomford 1983). In more recent times, bone has been stored by refrigeration for subsequent implantation and the pro-cedures for harvesting and storing it in bone banks have been well documented (Friedlander 1982). Considerable care is taken to ensure that the donor is free from serious transmissible disease, that the samples are sterile, and that proper records are maintained. There is a significant rate of infection associated with the use of massive bone allografts in revision and bone tumour surgery (Tomford et a! 1990). It is therefore important to be as thorough as possible in testing for an