While surgeons prefer internal fixation for younger patients and arthroplasty for older patients, they disagree about the optimal approach to the management of patients between sixty and eighty years old with a displaced fracture and active patients with a Garden type-III fracture. Surgeons also disagree on the optimal implants for internal fixation or arthroplasty.

Navigated knee replacement provides few advantages over conventional surgery on the basis of radiographic end points. Its clinical benefits are unclear and remain to be defined on a larger scale.

The fracture classification systems currently used most frequently were not developed or validated by rigorous scientific evaluation methods. This paper discusses the classification of fractures from an epidemiological and clinical decision-making perspective and proposes a standardized methodological concept for their development and scientific validation. Classification categories are clinically relevant entities that surgeons should be able to use for diagnosis with sufficient confidence to limit misclassification and associated treatment errors. The process of validation should assess the value of specific clinical information (eg, the use of radiographs or computed tomography scans) in increasing the probability of a correct diagnosis. A 3-phase validation concept is proposed where: 1) classification categories are defined and the classification process using specific diagnostic images is evaluated by experts in a series of agreement studies (reliability, accuracy, likelihood ratios); 2) a multicenter agreement study is conducted among a representative group of future users of the classification; and 3) the classification proposal is applied in the context of a prospective clinical study to assess its clinical usefulness.

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Background: The routine removal of orthopaedic fixation devices after fracture healing remains an issue of debate. There are no evidence-based guidelines on this matter, and little is known on surgeons' practice and perceived effectiveness of implant removal in different clinical settings.