This book is the result of an international symposium on bone transplantation, the first of its kind, held in Berne, Switzerland, on May 14-16, 1987. This symposium brought together some of the most outstanding experts - from all over the world, principally from North America and Europe -in the clinical bone transplantation and in basic research. It was an unique opportunity to summarize in a few days the state of the art in this field and to bring clinicians who carry out some research related to their work together with basic scientists. The clinician can on the one hand profit from the basis researcher's knowledge and on the other stimulate the researcher to share the orthopedic surgeon's interest in osteo­ articular allografts. The book, like the symposium, contains two types of contributions: 1. Papers from invited experts who have often dedicated a significant part of their professional life to the subject of bone transplantation. Knowledge which would otherwise be scattered among original papers from many different sources, some of it less firmly established and therefore less well known, is thus collected together in one volume, so that the reader does not have to weed out a mass ofless important material. These chapters may for a certain time act as a textbook on bone transplantation, but inevitably will eventually be superseded by new findings. 2. Descriptions of current research in all the main subjects covered in the state­ of-the-art papers.