Optimizing Patient Fusion

Mick J. Perez-Cruet, MD, MS 
Department of Neurosurgery, OUWB, School of Medicine 
Michigan Minimally Invasive Neurosurgical Institute

As a minimally invasive neuro spine surgeon, it is always my goal to optimize surgical outcomes for my patients undergoing spinal fusion. It is a known fact that your own bone represents the gold standard for spinal fusion as it contains all the elements needed for successfully forming new and viable bone. Using your own bone improves the chance of a complete spinal fusion and helps reduce the risk seen in other manufactured bone graft materials.

Using your own bone as the primary catalyst for new bone growth simply gives you your own bone back, which is why I invented the “BoneBac™” Press.

The BoneBacTM Press is an elegantly simple device that captures your own bone during the surgical procedure. This bone is then used in a variety of ways depending on the procedure. Instead of using manufactured bone grafts, your bone captured in the BoneBacTM Press is used to fill implants that can be placed into your cervical, thoracic, or lumbar spine. The bone can be used to achieve a fusion in cases where no implant is used such at decompressive laminectomies with posterior fusion. Or the bone can be used to reconstruct the lamina that is removed after a lumbar microdiscectomy to help reduce scar formation. The bone collected using the BoneBacTM Press can also be used to supplement manufactured bone graft material to possibly improve their effectiveness by adding your own cells to the graft material.