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Updated: Jun 24, 2026
Creating Rigidly Stabilized Fractures for Assessing Intramembranous Ossification, Distraction Osteogenesis, or Healing of Critical Sized Defects
Published on: April 11, 2012
Treatment of craniosynostosis by distraction osteogenesis
Takuya Akai1, Hideaki Iizuka, Shigehiko Kawakami
1Department of Neurosurgery, Kanazawa Medical University, Ishikawa, Japan. akai@kanazawa-med.ac.jp
Purpose:
Craniosynostosis patients treated with one-stage cranioplasty often have bleeding from the dura mater, fluid collection in the extradural space, and poor wound healing due to skin overstretching. To avoid these complications, we began using distraction osteogenesis. To determine the advantages and disadvantages of the procedure, we retrospectively compared distraction osteogenesis with conventional cranioplasty.
Patients And Results:
We treated 24 patients with fronto-orbital advancement. Fifteen had one-stage cranioplasty; 9 received distraction osteogenesis. The one-stage operation patients averaged 25.5 months of age at surgery, 289 min of operating time, and 154 ml of intraoperative blood loss. For the distraction group, the average age was 16.6 months, average operating time was 196 min, and average blood loss was 76 ml.
Conclusions:
Compared with one-stage cranioplasty patients, distraction osteogenesis patients had significantly less intraoperative bleeding and shorter operating times. The disadvantages of distraction treatment were the need for multiple surgeries, prolonged hospitalization, wound infection, and dislocation of the distraction device.
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