Patent ID: 7722620

Claim:
A method of treating an abnormal vertebra, comprising: delivering energy to a bone fill material flow that flows through a delivery cannula to alter a viscosity of the bone fill material; flowing a volume of the bone fill material flow, with a relatively high viscosity of at least about 1,000,000 cps, into a vertebral body under a first set of flow parameters; interdigitating cancellous bone with at least a portion of the volume of bone fill material, wherein a computer controller controls an energy source to alter the fill material within a delivery cannula to the relatively high viscosity of at least about 1,000,000 cps sufficient to controllably permeate and interdigitate with cancellous bone; flowing an additional volume of bone fill material with a relatively low viscosity into the vertebral body under a second set of flow parameters, different from the first set of flow parameters that substantially prevents interdigitation of the additional volume of bone fill material with cancellous bone; applying forces to the cancellous bone and interdigitated fill material about a surface of the interdigitated bone fill material with the additional volume of bone fill material; and controlling the viscosity of the bone fill material in response to a measured characteristic of the bone fill material flow, wherein the measured characteristic is selected from the group consisting of impedance, temperature, pressure, viscosity, flow parameters and volume.