Muhammad Ayaz Khan, Shah Wali Khan, Raja Irfan Qadir.
Role of External Fixator in the management of type-II & III open tibial fracture.
J Postgrad Med Inst Jan ;18(1):12-7.

Objective: To Evaluate the role of external fixator in the management of open tibial fractures. Material and Methods: This descriptive study of 30 cases was conducted in the Orthopaedic Department of Postgraduate Medical Institute, Lady Reading Hospital, Peshawar from September 1997 to September 1999. 28 male and 2 female patients presented with open tibial fractures due to high energy trauma with their mean age of 38 years. All the patient were evaluated for life threatening conditions as per ATLS protocol. After resuscitation, all the fracture were stabilized by applying AO external fixator device with skin and soft tissue care. Results: The simple AO external fixator proved satisfactory and impressive result were obtained with this fixator. There were 33 open tibial fractures, out of these 13(39.9%) were type-11, 15(45.4%) type-IIIa and 5(15.1%) type-IIIb fractures. No case was associate with injury to main vessels. Most of our patients reached the hospital late, losing the golden period of initial 6 hours. Majority of the fracture healed with an average time of twelve weeks (11-40) weeks after injury. Pain tract infection was the most common complication (47.4%) seen our series due to ignorance of the patients and failure to attend the review clinic regularly. Conclusion: External fixator is the best option for all open tibial fractures with severe soft tissue injuries and may be adopted in management of such fractures.

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