Publication:

A prospective study to estimate the outcome of patellar fracture fixation with suture material of high resistance properties

Background Patella fractures make from 0.5% to 1.5% of all bone fractures.  The most common fracture type, transverse fracture, impairs knee extension mechanics due to fragment displacement. In the years that followed, newer procedures were pursued in order to alleviate the aforementioned difficulties. K-wires were successfully replaced with cannulated screws. Furthermore, cerclage wiring was replaced with alternative implants without jeopardising the figure-of-eight tension band build.

Methods A prospective study was conducted over a period of 18 months to evaluate the outcome of patellar fractures fixation with newer techniques and sutures. The study had 35 participants.

Results This study included patients in the age group of 21-77 years. Among the total of 35 patients in the study, Maximum number of patients in our study were in the age range of 41-60 years which comprised 42.86%.  In this study of 35 patients, 20 were male patients and 15 patients were female i.e. 57.14% of our study group comprised of male patients while 42.86% comprised of female patients.

Conclusions The above study clearly demonstrates that the high resistance suture materials can be used as a potential alternative or may even be better to the existing prevalent fixation of patella fractures with stainless steel and wires. Fibertape fixation presents a lot of advantages over the traditional stainless steel and wire fixation. Biomechanically, fibertape has demonstrated tensile strength and stiffness equal to stainless steel and in certain specific parameters proved even more stronger than the stainless steel.