Current techniques for management of transverse displaced olecranon fractures.

Muscles Ligaments Tendons J

Queen Mary University of London, Centre for Sports and Exercise Medicine, Mile End Hospital, Mann Ward, London, England; Department of Musculoskeletal Disorders, University of Sabino School of Medicine and Surgery, Sabino, Italy.

Published: August 2015

Background: displaced transverse fractures of the olecranon are the most common fractures occurring in the elbow in adults that requires operative intervention.

Methods: a literature search was performed on PubMed, Web of Science, Science Direct/Scopus, Google Scholar and Google using the keywords 'olecranon', 'fracture', 'internal fixation' and 'tension band wiring', with no limit for time or restrictions to language.

Results: thirty-one clinical articles were selected: 20 retrospective studies, 9 prospective cohort studies, and 2 randomized control trials. The CMS ranged from 18 to 66 (mean 41.68): overall, the quality of the studies was poor, and no moderate or good quality studies were found. The mean follow-up was 46.7 months (range 1 to 350 months). Several complications occurred after surgery: prominent hardware, skin breakdown, wire migration and infections occurred frequently. Removal of the hardware was required in 472 patients, usually after complaints, but also removal was routinely undertaken.

Conclusions: tension band wiring is still the most widely applied method to operatively manage olecranon fractures, with the transcortical method of using K-wires the most satisfactory. Plate fixation is a good alternative as complications are minimal. Other techniques using absorbable sutures are less investigated, but are promising, especially in children.

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Source
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4496013PMC

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