Management of Gustilo-Anderson IIIB open tibial fractures in adults-a systematic review.

Introduction: Open tibial fractures are the most common open long bone fracture, despite this, the management of these complex injuries still remains a topic of discussion amongst orthopaedic surgeons.

Sources Of Data: We searched the EMBASE, MEDLINE and Google Scholar and a systematic review of 7500 articles, leaving 23 after exclusion criteria were applied, in order to analyse the management of open tibial fractures.

Areas Of Agreement And Controversy: Infection was noted to be the most significant concern amongst authors, with definitive external fixation having a high rate of superficial pin-site infection and internal fixation having a high deep infection rate.