Biomechanical behavior of retrograde intramedullary nails in distal femoral fractures.

Fractures of the distal femur affect three different groups of individuals: younger people suffering high-energy trauma, elderly people with fragile bones and people with periprosthetic fractures around previous total knee arthroplasty. Main indications of intramedullary nailing are for supracondylar fractures type A or type C of the AO classification. The main objective of the present work is to analyze, by means of FE simulation, the influence of retrograde nail length, considering different blocking configurations and fracture gaps, on the biomechanical behavior of supracondylar fractures of A type.