Jong Chul Ahn

Treatment of the tibia shaft fractures with ender nails

Fractures of the tibial shaft are the most common among the long bone fractures, and have much difficulty in treatment due to their enumerous complications. Thirty patients with fractures of the tibial shaft were treated with Ender nails under the image intensifier at the Department of Orthopedic Surgery, Yeungnam University Hospital from December 1986 to November 1991. The following results were observed. 1. The average age was 37.3 years and the number of male was three times of the female. The most common cause was traffic accident. 2. Twenty cases out of thirty one were closed fractrure and the remaining 11 were open. The comminuted and segmental fractures were 18(57.7%) in number and the most common fracture site was the middle one third(53%). 3. Average interval from injury to operation was 7.6 days and 19 cases showed associated injuries. 4. The mean duration of the bone union was 18.9 weeks and 2 cases showed the delayed union. 5. Twelve complications were noted such as shortening, varus deformity, delayed union, ankle motion limitation, nail irritation, and soft tissue infection.

Two cases of disc internal disruption syndrome

The disc internal disruption syndrome is not well known to us, but the following hypothesis is widely accepted in clinical practice. The disc internal disruption syndrome may develop intractable back pain with aggrevated of pain, loss of spinal motion with any physical exercise, leg pain, loss of energy, marked weight loss, and profound depression. The patient with this syndrome will be found to have normal plain roentgenograms, myelograms, CT scans, results of blood examination and neurologic findings. For these reasons, this syndrome was frequently diagnosed by abnormal discographic findings. We had experience with two cases of disc internal disruption syndrome with clinical, roentgenographic and discographic evaluations. Thus We present these cases with a brief review of the concerned literature.