• Xuqi Hu, Siqi Xu, Huigen Lu, Bao Chen, Xiao Zhou, Xiaojun He, Jiaping Dai, Zhongwei Zhang, and Suiliang Gong.
• Department of Orthopaedics, the Second Affiliated Hospital of Jiaxing University, 1518 Huancheng North Road, Jiaxing, China.
• J Orthop Surg Res. 2016 May 11; 11 (1): 59.

BackgroundIn this study, we performed a meta-analysis to identify whether minimally invasive plate osteosynthesis (MIPO) was superior to conventional fixation techniques (CFT) for treating humeral shaft fractures.MethodsA systematic literature search was conducted up to February 2016 in ScienceDirect, Springer, MEDLINE, and PubMed databases for relevant papers that compared the outcomes of MIPO with CFT, such as open reduction with plate osteosynthesis (ORPO) and intramedullary nail (IMN) for treating humeral shaft fractures. Meta-analysis was performed with Review Manager 5.0 software.ResultsAccording to the search strategy, eight studies that covered 391 patients were enrolled, including four randomized controlled trials (RCTs), two prospective cohort trials, and two retrospective cohort trials. Our meta-analysis did not detect any significant difference between MIPO and CFT (IMN and ORPO) in terms of operative time, fracture union rate, and fracture union time. However, MIPO has a less rate of complications and iatrogenic radial nerve palsy than that of ORPO and higher adjacent joint function scores than those of IMN (p < 0.05).ConclusionsBased on the present evidence, this meta-analysis suggested that MIPO was a better choice for treating humeral shaft fractures than CFT. However, more high-quality randomized trials are still needed to further confirm this conclusion in the future.

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