Introduction
The fixation of femoral shaft fractures in polytrauma patients
remains a controversial subject. Historically the timing of definitive
fixation has ranged from traction with delayed fixation to early
total care and more recently damage control orthopaedics
.Evidence put forward in the 1980s supported a move away
from traction and bed rest towards early total care, citing a reduction in the rates of pulmonary complications, hospital and intensive care unit stays.In the 1990s, the universal approach to early
total care was challenged as it was realized that providing definitive fixation of
femoral shaft fractures with intramedullary nailing had detrimental physiologic effects
on the already compromised polytrauma patient. The instrumentation
of the medullary canal with reaming and nail insertion became
known as a modifiable ‘second hit’ in the development of post injury
complications such as acute lung injury, acute respiratory distress syndrome and multiple organ failure.damage control orthopaedics was adapted from the successful implementation of damage control surgery used in the treatment of exsanguinating torso trauma patients. The principle is to provide adequate skeletal stability on long bones to prevent further bleeding, soft tissue damage, potential fat embolism and to permit better positioning for the patient in the ICU without the potential adverse effects of early definitive fixation. This abbreviated procedure (usually external fixation) allows the patients to recover from the initial hit of severe trauma and optimizes their condition for later definitive fixation (usually intramedullary nailing). The current literature is equivocal about
the damage control orthopaedics versus early total care concept. A recent randomized control trial by Pape et al. concluded that the ‘borderline’ group of patients has significantly less incidence of ALI when treated using
DCO principles.
The purpose of this study was to evaluate the demographics,
management and outcomes of the high energy, polytrauma FSF
patients of our Level-1 trauma centre in comparison with those of
the randomized controlled trial.