Dynamic compression nail: A preliminary report

The study included 11 femoral and tibial nailings performed for various clinical applications such as acute fractures, non-unions and malunions.All the fractures attained radiological union, with good skeletal continuity across the fracture, within an average time of 13 weeks in fresh fractures and 18 weeks in non-unions.Active compression through intramedullary compression nailing has great utility for treating non-unions where it provides greater degree of impaction of its irregular ends. This may prove greatly advantageous to the fracture union through increased stability and the osteogenic potential, particularly when utilized in combination with the small diameter unreamed nails.The compression plating was a great advancement in technology for fixation of long bone fractures in the sixties and was the method of choice for nearly two decades. The interlocking nailing which was first described by Modney [1] in 1953, has undergone many design modifications since then and has almost completely replaced the plating in the present day. It offers a load bearing-device with excellent stability against the axial and rotational deformation of the fracture. It involves much less surgical exposure and therefore the reduced risk of infection. However, it fails to create the contact compression at the fracture surfaces, which is a desirable physiological stimulus to fracture union providing a distinct advantage to the compression plating.The AO nail with an oval proximal hole provides the dynamic locking and is able to overcome the said deficiency [2] to some extent but it relies on muscular forces and the weight bearing for the compression, with no inherent compression of the device itself. The special interest in compression nailing started in the 1970s in an effort to combine the advantage of compression osteosynthesis to the nailings. The telescopic locking nail [3] and the intramedullary compression nail [4-6] described to provide a reliable, innovative intramedullary n