Adult stem cells in the healing of fractures and bone grafts

Abstract

The traumatic accidents which result in fractures and even in impairment of a bone segment have a high prevalence in routine veterinary surgery. Many times these fractures are complex and difficulty healing or need bone grafts to preserve and restore the length of the affected limb. Thus, the recovery time of these animals is usually delicate and long, with complications risks, such as delayed union and non-union of the fractured bone segments or absence of graft incorporation. In this sense, the stem cells (SC) have shown to be a strong ally of the orthopedic doctors due to their capacity to provide osteoprogenitor cells, to increase the osteoinductive effect minimize the healing time and provide a greater efficiency to the repairing process. Due to that, before the expectation of their assignments, this review aims to describe the stem cells characteristics, their current applications in the fractures healing and, especially, their contribution to the bone grafts consolidation.