No abstract

Ten patients, who were unsuitable for limb lengthening over an intramedullary nail, underwent lengthening with a submuscular locking plate. Their mean age at operation was 18.5 years (11 to 40). After fixing a locking plate submuscularly on the proximal segment, an external fixator was applied to lengthen the bone after corticotomy. Lengthening was at 1 mm/day and on reaching the target length, three or four screws were placed in the plate in the distal segment and the external fixator was removed. All patients achieved the pre-operative target length at a mean of 4.0 cm (3.2 to 5.5). The mean duration of external fixation was 61.6 days (45 to 113) and the mean external fixation index was 15.1 days/cm (13.2 to 20.5), which was less than one-third of the mean healing index (48 days/cm (41.3 to 55). There were only minor complications. Lengthening with a submuscular locking plate can successfully permit early removal of the fixator with fewer complications and is a useful alternative in children or when nailing is difficult.

OCI is a very useful parameter for the determination of neutral position during occipitocervical fusion for patients with altered C0-C2 anatomy.

We suggest that mini-screw on lateral mass can be fixed safely without FV, if they are fixed at MSD of 6 mm from a joint surface. Facet joint violation doesn't occur if an OSA is given in the cephalad direction in case of not enough MSD for mini-screws.

BackgroundRecently, multi-planar reconstruction of the three-dimensional (3D) spiral chest CT scan has demonstrated superiority in the evaluation of the tracheobronchial tree. The goal of this study was to measure the lengths of the right and left main bronchi and their anteroposterior (AP) and transverse (TR) diameters using the 3D and two-dimensional (2D) images in the same adult respectively, and to evaluate the degree of correlation between them.MethodsWe measured the lengths of the right and left main bronchi from the carina to the first of their branches and the AP and TR diameters at the mid-portion of the right main bronchus and 2 cm below the carina in the left main bronchus. We determined the size of the left-sided double-lumen tube (DLT) based on the measured AP diameter of the left main bronchus from the 3D and 2D images, respectively.ResultsThere was moderate correlation between the lengths of both main bronchi obtained from the 3D images and the 2D images, and between the AP diameter of the left main bronchus obtained from the 3D images and the 2D images. Same sized DLTs were estimated in 69% of the men and 34% of the women.ConclusionsThe lengths of the right and left main bronchi and their AP and TR diameters obtained from 3D images were not strongly correlated with those from 2D images. Therefore, a further study is needed to verify the superiority of 3D images in selecting the appropriate size of left-sided DLT.