Injury
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Restoration of elbow flexion is one of the key components of adult brachial plexus surgery. Nerve transfers are routinely used to attain elbow flexion. ⋯ The additional nerve transfer of median nerve fascicles with musculocutaneous nerve branch to the brachialis muscle does not add clinically obvious morbidity to the patient but has definite benefit as observed in this study. We advocate double fascicular nerve transfer for elbow flexion in upper brachial plexus injuries if the median and ulnar nerve functions are normal.
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Patient outcomes after intertrochanteric fracture fixation is the subject of a large body of published and ongoing clinical research. Fracture reduction and stable fixation are a pre-requisite for achieving optimal results. However, reporting on the quality of postoperative reduction and fixation, has been inconsistent in the literature on intertrochanteric fractures. The purpose of this study was to examine the quality and consistency of reporting of immediate postoperative reduction and fixation in clinical outcome studies of intertrochanteric fracture fixation. ⋯ Despite its recognized influence on outcomes of intertrochanteric fractures, leading peer-reviewed journals do not uniformly report on the immediate postoperative assessment of the quality of reduction and fixation. However, reporting has improved over the past five years. Standardized quantitative metrics will need to be reported in the future to allow meaningful comparisons between studies and accurate assessment of intertrochanteric fracture outcome.
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Single nucleotide variants (SNVs) represent important genetic risk factors for susceptibility to posttraumatic sepsis and a potential target for immunotherapy. We aimed to evaluate the association between 8 different SNVs within tumor necrosis factor alpha (TNFA), lymphotoxin alpha (LTA) and Toll-like receptor (TLR2 and TLR4) genes and the risk of posttraumatic sepsis. ⋯ Carriage of the G allele of the TNFA rs1800629 gene variant and T allele-carriage of the TLR4 rs4986791 genetic variant confer significant risk of posttraumatic sepsis. TLR4 gene variants (rs4986790 and rs4986791) has been labelled as disease causing.
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The literature places the occurrence of paediatric Monteggia lesions between 1.5% and 3% of all childhood elbow injuries. There are circumstances, which may make early correct diagnosis difficult. Failure to make an early correct diagnosis may have catastrophic consequences on joint range of motion in the chronic stage. The goal of this paper is to describe our three-step approach to the treatment of acute Monteggia lesions based on the stability and radiological appearance of the fracture dislocation, to give an overview of possible pitfalls and clinical and radiological signs that aid the diagnostic process. ⋯ The Three Step Method allows for primary definitive treatment of these lesions with low complication rates and good range of motion result. Implementing the three step method in the acute phase helps avoid catastrophic consequences on joint range of motion in the chronic stage.
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Infected post-traumatic distal femur defects remain a therapeutic challenge. Non-biological reconstruction offers an option for avoiding complex biological knee arthrodesis procedures. The CompressⓇ implant is an alternative to the traditional distal femur stemmed megaprosthesis. The aim of this study is to analyse the first patients treated with a distal femur CompressⓇ prosthesis to manage massive infected post-traumatic defects of the distal femur with joint involvement. ⋯ Non-biological reconstruction of the distal femur with the CompressⓇ implant is a valid option in selected patients with massive infected defects with joint involvement. Survivorship was high, with all loosening occurring in the first months after surgery-representing a failure in the osseointegration of the implant.