The Treatment of Humeral Shaft Fracture by Functional Bracing

Yoo, Chong Ill; Song, Ju Ho; Hong, Bum Sik

Abstract

The recent trend in method of long bone fracture had been toward bracing or closed medullary nailing except for certain fractures that fall within well-established surigcal criteria. Functional bracing is gaining widespread acceptance in management of tibial, femoral, and forearm fractures and is well suited to humeral shaft fractures. Twenty four cases of humeral shaft fractures were treated with functional brace and early mobiliza tion from October 19S2 to June 1984 at Busan National University Hospital and the results were as follows. 1. The fracture sites were composed of middle third in 15 cases, distal third in 6 cases, and proximal third in 3 cases and the fracture shapes were transverse in 10 cases, oblique and spiral in 5 cases respectively, and comminuted in 4 cases. 2. The average time from injury to functional bracing was 13.0 days and to discontinuance of the functional brace was 9.0 weeks. 3. Nonunions have not been encountered in all cases. The residual angulation was under 20degrees in all but one and the most common deformity was varus in 20 cases. Minimum limitation of motion, mostly a loss of the last few degrees of external rotation, was detected after follow-up of 2 months but did not present any clinical problem. 4. The achievement of rapid and uninterrupted osteogenesis without undesirable functional or cos- metic deficit could be listed as the advantage.