Newly designed minimally invasive plating of a humerus shaft fracture; a different introduction of the plate.

PURPOSE: Open reductions and internal fixations are currently being used the most in surgeries of humeral shaft fractures. However, there are some limitations such as invasive techniques and formation of many operation scars. To overcome these limitations, a minimally invasive plate osteosynthesis has been recently introduced. However, this has technical limitations such as deep dissections of the distal portion and narrowness of the fixation space. To address these problems, we designed another introductory technique of a minimally invasive osteosynthesis and we have examined the clinical usefulness of that.

METHODS: The results were retrospectively analyzed with 83 patients who visited INHA hospital due to a humeral shaft fractures and who had undergone the above said surgery from the beginning of 2010 to the end of 2012. The patients were divided into two groups: patients treated by the MIPO technique using the newly designed dual approaches (group A) and patients treated by open reduction and plating internal fixation (group B).

RESULTS: There was no significant difference in mean duration of injury, the mean fracture union time, range of motion and MEPI for group A and B. There was no statistical significance between the two groups. However, the occurrence of iatrogenic radial nerve palsy in group B, was significantly higher than in group A.

CONCLUSIONS: MIPOs using the dual approaches on the adult humerus shaft fracture show an excellent bony union without nerve injury which is clinically useful.