NON-UNION OF TIBIAL SHAFT FRACTURE: FRACTING SCORE ANALYSIS IN A RETROSPECTIVE MULTI-CENTER STUDY

D. Quarta¹ , M. Grassi¹, G. Lattanzi¹, D. Potena² , A. D’Anca², A. P. Gigante³

¹ Clinical Orthopedics, Department of Clinical and Molecular Science, School of Medicine, Università Politecnica Delle Marche, Ancona, Italy
² Department of Information and Engineering, Università Politecnica Delle Marche, Ancona, Italy
³ Clinic of Adult and Pediatric Orthopedics, Department of Clinical and Molecular Sciences, Polytechnic University of Marche, Ancona, Italy

Correspondence to:

Journal of Orthopedics 2023 Jan-Apr; 15(1): 14-22
https://doi.org/10.69149/orthopedics/2023v15iss1_33

Received: 3 March 2023 Accepted: 19 April 2023

Download PDF

Abstract

Delayed union, malunion and non-union are serious complications in the healing of fractures. Predicting the risk of non-union before or after surgery is challenging. We analyzed FRACTING score for each patient. The aim of this study was to find out if this score is accurate to predict this complication. We collected tibial shaft fractures undergoing surgery from January 2016 to December 2020 in three different trauma hospitals. In a retrospective multicenter study, we considered only fractures treated with intramedullary nailing, calculating FRACTING score at the time of definitive fixation. Of the 130 patients enrolled, 89 patients (68.4%) healed within 9 months and were classified as union, 41 patients (31.5%) healed in more than 9 months or underwent other surgical procedures and were classified as non-union. For each patient, FRACTING score was calculated, and based on the clinical outcome the score was compared in a statistical analysis. FRACTING showed a good performance predicting the non-union risk. From our data is clear that male gender and greater age is a risk factor for non-union.

Keywords: bone, nonunion, prediction model, scores, tibial fracture, trauma