Supracondylar-intercondylar fracture of the femur are not easy to treat, because of its severity and complications. Particularly, displaced supracondylar fractures involving intercondyle causes not only limitation of knee joint motion, but also
pain and
angular deformity. So recently, accurate anatomical reduction and rigid internal fixation was recommended.
@ES We studied 10 cases of displaced supracondylar-intercondylar fractures of femur at our hospital from January, 1988 to June, 1989, and the results were as follows:
EN 1. Age distribution was between 24 and 55 years old (average : 35.9 years). And follow-up period was from 1 year to 3 years. And the most common cause of these fractures was traffic accident.
2. Average time to union was 14.2 weeks.
According to Schatzker's criteria, good results were 2 cases. Fair in 4, and failure in 4. By Neer's criteria, satisfactory result was 1 case, unsatisfactory in 5, failure in 4. The major complications developed in our study were angular
deformity
and
infection.
3. Despite relatively accurate anatomical reduction and rigid internal fixation, prognosis were not satisfactory. So we could think the results as follows:
1) High energy trauma, extensile approach and manipulations for accurate anatomical reduction lead to many soft tissue injuries and the associated injuries cause difficulty in early exercise.
2) To prevent the complications such as bone shortening and angular deformity, it is thought to keep our mind on the possible abnormalities of the length and angulation before and after the internal fixation, and on the accurate fixation of the
fracture fragments with suitable internal fixation device.
3) The bony alignment after reduction was relatively good on X-ray films but there were many injuries of articular cartilage and the biomechanical changes of the knee joint by angular deformity
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