Operative Treaeent of Hohl II, III Plateau Fracture by Small Incision and Bone Window

Kwon, Jin Woo; Sohn, Kyoung Tae; Shin, Sung Ho; Lee, Woo Se; Jo, Won Ho; Kim, Jae Il

Abstract

Severely depressed plateau fractures, especially Hohl I, III, can not be reduced by ligamentotaxis and require elevation through a cortical window, bone grafting, and fixation with either cancellous screws or a buttress plate. But traditional long lateral parapatellar incision and plate fixation method caused frequent wound dehiscence and deep infection. Thus to reduce the soft tissue problem we treated Hohl II, III plateau fractures by small anterolateral L-shaped incision, submeniscal exposure, reduction of depressed plateau and bone graft through bone window, and then cancellous screws fixation beneath the subchondral bone of elevated plateau. We anayzes 22 cases with Hohl II, III plateau fractures, which were treated by these method from February 1990 to December 1997 and followed more than 1 year. Males were 17, and females were 5. Average age of patients was 44.7 years. The most common cause of injury was traffic accidents(17 cases), and fracture type according to the Hohl classification was 14 cases of type II, 8 of type III. The associated injuries were 18 cases of meniscus tear, 13 of ligament injury(6 ACL, 7 MCL). The clinical results by Blokkers criteria were satisfactory 19 cases(86.3%) and unsatisfactory 3 cases(13.7%). We concluded that this method has following advantages; relatively firm fracture fixation, short operation time, low soft tissue problem.