The indications, technical principals, and results after vertebroplasty and kyphoplasty are presented in detail. We focus on the complications of both procedures. The benefit of vertebroplasty has been fundamentally questioned by two papers which have recently been published in the New England Journal of Medicine. Our paper discusses the present knowledge and policy about indication. The contradictory results from different studies are presented. In general, there is a lack of randomized clinical trials. Therefore, a final judgement of these two techniques is not possible. New procedures like stent-kyphoplasty or lordoplasty are briefly described. However, at present an assessment of these new techniques is impossible. A similar situation is give for the application of resorbable bone cements.