The twenty-two posterolateral bonse-grafting operations performed by the author have produced the following results. In fifteen legs the fractures have united without additional bone surgery, as shown by clinical tests and x-ray. Two legs have become stable but springy after one year. The patients in these two cases are without pains and are walking with the assistance of a leather lacer brace. Each seems to be slowly increasing in strength, and one of the two has been working at heavy labor for more than a year; in this patient, a one-inch tibial defect was bridged by the graft. Two patients were lost to follow-up seven weeks after the operation, at which time they were still in casts but union was progressing satisfactorily. Two patients were still in casts (three and four months after the operation) and union was progressing satisfactorily. The one patient whose wound was grossly infected was last seen four months after the operation, at which time, in spite of the infection, motion at the fracture site was not demonstrable clinically.

In general, grafting through the posterolateral approach is considered very helpful in patients in whom infection of the tibia is already present or in whom it is likely to occur. At times this operation evens appears mandatory on economic grounds.