Lateral Divergent Pinning Versus Lateral Parallel Pinning in Management of Supracondylar Fractures of the Humerus in Children

Abstract

Supracondylar humerus fracture in children is a very common elbow injury. The commonly accepted treatment of type II and III supracondylar fractures of humerus in children is closed reduction with percutaneous pinning. Lateral pinning has an advantage of avoiding the possibility of iatrogenic ulnar nerve injury. This study was conducted to compare the stability of lateral divergent pinning and lateral parallel pinning in treatment of type II and type III supracondylar humerus. A prospective, randomized, single Centre, study was conducted at the Emergency Department of Benha university hospitals from March 2019 to November 2019. Thirty children with supracondylar humerus fracture Gartland type IIB and type III were treated with two techniques: lateral divergent (15 patients), and lateral parallel (15 patients). All of them were included for the study and analysis of results regarding functional outcome and graded according to Flynn`s criteria and Baumann’s angleThirty children were treated for displaced supracondylar fracture of humerus during the study period, 9 females and 21 males, and mean age was 5.1 years. The mean duration from admission to surgery was 17.3 hours, The mean follow-up duration was 3 months. In lateral divergent pinning group, 14 patients with excellent result and one good. In lateral parallel pinning technique 13 patients with excellent and 2 good. There was no statistically significant difference with regard to functional outcome between the two groups. Both methods produced satisfactory results in all cases.