Harvesting bone graft material for use in spinal and other fusion surgeries

A procedure for harvesting graft material for use during bone fusion surgery, comprising:

• providing a cage having a front wall, a rear wall, and a chamber inside the cage between the front and the rear wall;
• arranging a bone cutting mechanism including a generally U-shaped cutting blade and a paddle within the chamber between the front and the rear wall of the cage, the cutting blade having a base, a pair of legs spaced apart a certain width from one another, and a closed end that extends a certain length from the base of the blade, and both of the cutting blade and the paddle are rotatable about a common axis;
• inserting the cage to a desired position in a defined space between adjacent bones that are to be fused to one another, and rotating the cutting blade so that the blade cuts into the bones thereby forming a generally semicircular solid bone segment within each one of the bones, wherein each bone segment has a width corresponding to the spacing between the legs of the cutting blade, and a radius corresponding to the length between the base and the closed end of the cutting blade;
• and
• rotating the paddle to displace the solid bone segments formed within the adjacent bones angularly, whereby a first end portion of each bone segment enters the bone opposite the bone within which the segment was formed, an intermediate portion of the bone segment spans the space between the bones, and a second end portion of the bone segment remains in the bone within which the segment was formed;
• each bone segment thereby defining a strut graft for promoting a fusion of the adjacent bones to one another.