• Acta orthopaedica · Oct 2007

    Tibial intramedullary nails -- should they be removed? A retrospective study of 71 patients.

    • Abbas H Karladani, Per Ake Ericsson, Hans Granhed, Lars Karlsson, and Peter Nyberg.
    • Department of Orthopaedics, Sahlgrenska Hospital, Göteborg University, Sweden. akarladani@telia.com
    • Acta Orthop. 2007 Oct 1; 78 (5): 668-71.

    BackgroundAnterior knee pain and young age of the patient have been considered justification for removal of a tibial intramedullary nail. There have been few reports on the outcome after nail removal, however.Patients And MethodsWe studied 71 patients in whom 72 tibial nails had been removed. We used self-assess-ment questionnaires to evaluate the location, intensity, and frequency of pain before and after removal. The degree of satisfaction was scored on a visual analog scale.Results39 of 71 patients had less pain after removal of the nail, but were not asymptomatic. 14 patients had unaltered pain, and 18 patients had increased pain. 4 of 6 patients who had been treated with fasciotomy were not satisfied with the outcome of nail removal.InterpretationThe results of nail removal to alleviate pain are poor. Removal of a nail should not be undertaken unless there is a convincing indication.

      Pubmed     Full text   Copy Citation     Plaintext  

      Add institutional full text...

    Notes

     
    Knowledge, pearl, summary or comment to share?
    300 characters remaining
    help        
    You can also include formatting, links, images and footnotes in your notes
    • Simple formatting can be added to notes, such as *italics*, _underline_ or **bold**.
    • Superscript can be denoted by <sup>text</sup> and subscript <sub>text</sub>.
    • Numbered or bulleted lists can be created using either numbered lines 1. 2. 3., hyphens - or asterisks *.
    • Links can be included with: [my link to pubmed](http://pubmed.com)
    • Images can be included with: ![alt text](https://bestmedicaljournal.com/study_graph.jpg "Image Title Text")
    • For footnotes use [^1](This is a footnote.) inline.
    • Or use an inline reference [^1] to refer to a longer footnote elseweher in the document [^1]: This is a long footnote..

    hide…