Background: In recent years, most fractures of the long shaft of the lower limbs in children caused by a car accident are mostly open fractures, commonly occur in the tibia and fibula, and are often combined with different degrees of injury of the skin and soft tissue. The purpose of this study is evaluation of usage of external fixators as definitive management of open Fractures in pediatric patients.
Methods: External fixation technique was performed on 15 patients with open long bones fractures at Benha University Hospital's department of Orthopedics and Traumatology over a 12 to 24 weeks follow-up period. Results: The current study confirms that functional and radiological results using external fixation technique were good and statistically comparable with the other techniques. Mean age of patients was 9.60 ± 3.07 ranged from 6 to 16 years. There was male predominance (73.3%). The Most common mechanism of injury was RTA (73.3%) followed by direct fall of heavy object and localized trauma. The distribution of the studied cases according to Gustilo grade was grade 2 (53.3%) grade 3a (33.3) grade 3b (6.7%). The most common injured bone was tibia (80%). The average time of surgery was 87.0 ± 37.26 minutes. The patients started ROM immediate postoperatively (80%), after 2 weeks (13.3%) and after 5 months (6.7%) . Weight bearing started immediately in 3 cases , after 2 weeks in 2 cases and after 1 months in 10 cases. The average time of Radiological union was 4.27 ± 1.22 months . The average time of fixator removal 4.63 ± 1.14 months. Complications included skin infection (60%), Stiffness (26.7%) , NV problems (13.3%),pin fracture (6.7%) and refracture of bone (6.7%).
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