A prospective study of functional outcome of treatment of supracondylar fracture of femur by locking compression plate

Aim: To evaluate the functional outcome of supracondylar femur fracture treated by locking compression plate. Materials and Methods: Our study consists of 20 cases of supracondylar femur fracture operated at Sanjay Gandhi institute of trauma and orthopaedics from November 2015 to march 2017.Functional outcome was assessed through Neers scoring system. All the cases in the study were posttraumatic. Mean duration of follow up was 11 months Results: There were 7 male patients and female were 13.Average age of the patients was 40.5 years with age ranging from 18 years to77 years.14 cases involved the right femur whereas 7 left sided femur fracture occured. The study included only one case of compound type 1 femur fracture and 19 cases were closed supracondylar femur fractures. The mode of injury was RTA for 12 cases and 8 cases had history of self-fall. Only 3 cases had associated injuries. In patients with associated injuries early rehabilitation were delayed but results were comparable with other cases of the study. In our study Muller type A3 was the most common fracture presentation which consists of 7 cases followed by 5 type A1 fractures. There were 4 cases of type C1 fractures, 2 cases of type C3 fracture and one case in each type A2 and C2 group. 5 cases were operated under MIPPO technique which were extraarticular fractures. Further all fractures which had articular involvement were operated on standard open approach. Average surgical procedure timing was 101.5 minutes in our study. Most of the patients had excellent postoperative knee flexion with average knee flexion of 119 degrees. Average duration of radiological union was 19.3 weeks and average duration of weight bearing was 20.3 weeks.1 patient in the study had delayed union, 2 cases had a extensor lag of 5 degree while 1 patient had an extensor lag of 10 degrees. 10 cases in the study had fracture union without any complications. Stiffness was present in 7 cases, Knee pain was reported in 3 cases. 1 cases had shortening of 1cm .Superficial infections were reported in two cases which responded to intravenous antibiotics based on pus culture report. There was no incidence of deep surgical site infection in our study. In our study there was one case of implant failure requiring revision surgery. The patient had a episode of fall 3 months after primary surgery. Radiograph showed implant failure with varus deformity at the fracture site and no signs of callus formation.