I’m going to have a neck fusion next week. The surgeon will use bone chips taken from my pelvic bone. I’ve been warned that there may be some pain at the donor site. What about the place where the bone chips go — won’t there be pain where they put the graft?

Pain at the donor site is a common side effect of bone graft taken from patients. Increased pain at the recipient site is also common but less often reported. This may be because there is a generalized increase in pain and soreness at the surgical site from the incision and the surgery as a whole.

Doctors are looking for a way to alleviate donor site pain. Postoperative pain control is well-recognized as an important way to promote a faster recovery from any surgery.

A recent study tried bathing the surgical site with anesthetic (numbing) drugs. This method might work by itself but most patients are already taking a systemic narcotic-based pain reliever. The systemic drug seems to offer equal pain control at the donor and the recipient sites.