Treatment of congenital pseudarthrosis of the tibia by microsurgical fibula transfer

Abstract

Conventional methods for the treatment of congenital pseudarthrosis of the tibia (CPT) often lead to unsatisfactory results and so microsurgical fibula transfer (MFT) has appeared as an option to treat this challenging problem. In this series of 27 patients with CPT, we obtained satisfactory results in 23 as assessed by the timing of bone union and bone hypertrophy of the fibular transplant. The overall functional results were also good; in 18 patients, the residual shortening was less than 2 cm (with no limb shortening in 4) and in 7, shortening ranged between 2 and 4 cm. All 25 patients resumed normal walking without the help of braces after an average of 12 months. This report suggests that microvascular fibula transfers provide superior results in the treatment of CPT, especially when considering that many of such cases represented previous surgical failures.