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Patients with osteoporosis have low rate of mechanical failure after distal radial fracture surgery
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SAN FRANCISCO — Researchers found a low risk of mechanical failure in patients with osteoporosis who had distal radius fracture fixation with a volar locking plate, according to a presenter here.
“What we found with the standard locking plates, it is a safe procedure, even in the face of osteoporotic bone with an overall low failure rate,” Jesse B. Jupiter, MD, said at the American Society for Surgery of the Hand Annual Meeting, here. “It did not provide evidence that poor bone quality increases the risk of mechanical failure with stable plates in this group of patients.”
Jupiter and colleagues evaluated 249 patients with a distal radial fracture who had low bone mineral density (BMD) who subsequently underwent fixation with a volar locking plate, according to the abstract. They performed clinical examinations at 6 weeks, 12 weeks and 1 year postoperatively. Patients were divided into mechanical failure and control groups based on whether they experienced complications after surgery.
The researchers found 3.6% of patients in the study had a mechanical failure. However, the mean BMD of the patients who had mechanical failure were similar to the patients in the control group. Jupiter and colleagues noted that DASH and Patient Rated Wrist Evaluation questionnaire scores improved after 1 year but did not return to pre-injury levels, and those patients with mechanical failure had significantly worse outcomes at 1 year.
Reference:
Jupiter JB. Paper #9. Presented at: American Society for Surgery of the Hand Annual Meeting. Oct. 3-5, 2013; San Francisco.
Disclosure: Jupiter receives research support from an AO Foundation grant, has an ownership interest in and is a paid employee of OHK company and is an intellectual property rights holder with Trimed Co.