ABSTRACT
Bone blood flow studies have long been driven by the need to know which vessels could be sacrificed during surgery without compromising the bone of interest. The routine use of internal fixation devices, which began in the 1950s with development of the Charnley hip,
required reaming and plating of the bone, and concern arose over the effects of loss of blood vessels from these procedures. Angiography was the principal investigative tool used to study this problem because the technique had a 200-year history of application to normal bone blood supply. Extending the pioneering angiography study of Albinus,
who in 1754 was the first to inject a form of ink into cortical vessels, Brookes and Harrison,
Crock,
Kelly,
Rhinelander,
and Trueta
injected India ink, barium sulfate, or radiopaque latex into nutrient vessels feeding various bones, primarily tibias and femurs. The goal of these studies was to determine where blood goes and what kinds of vessels carry it. Brookes incorporated some of these studies and more physiological results into his definitive tome on blood supply of bone which was first published in 1971
and revised in 1998.
