An unorthodox solution to an intra-operative complication of hip fracture fixation

Abstract

Lag screw failure is one of the mechanisms of failure of fixation in pertrochanteric hip fracture. The usual mechanism is cephalic cutting out. The overall prevalence is between 1 and 1.7%‘, and this increases to 8-8.6%2,3 for unstable pertrochanteric fractures. We present a case of intraoperative lag screw failure with the lag screw of a sliding compression hip screw device backing out from the head during application of the compression screw. An unorthodox solution to the problem will be presented.