Duke orthopaedic surgeons Dr. James Urbaniak, Dr. David Ruch, Dr. Marc Richard, and Dr. Samuel Wellman perform the Free Vascularized Fibular Graft.

Dr. Urbaniak developed the procedure to prevent young patients from having to undergo total hip replacement surgery.

Young people are poor candidates for artificial hips because the joint will most likely have to be replaced two or three times during the course of their life. As an alternative, this procedure uses the patient's own tissue to reconstruct diseased or damaged hip joints by removing dead bone, that has poor blood supply from the hip, and replacing it with vascularized (blood-rich) bone from the fibula. The fibula is the smaller bone located in the lower leg and because it is not a weight-bearing bone patients suffer no adverse effects on their subsequent mobility or activity.

In fact, the success rate of this procedure remains over 80 percent compared with a nearly 50 percent failure rate in young patients who receive total hip replacement.

Learn More

Download our patient handbook to learn more.

Free Vascularized Fibular Graft Patient Handbook (PDF, 2MB)