Sliding screw in the treatment of trochanteric and subtrochanteric fractures.

From spring 1979 all patients with trochanteric and subtrochanteric fractures treated at Aarhus County Hospital have been operated on with the sliding nail, and the patients' progress has been followed for 1 year. In this article the results from the 92 first operations are compared with the results from a controlled trial comparing Ender's nailing and McLaughlin's nail-plate fixation. The latter series originated from the same department but from 1976 until 1978. It was bound that the time of anaesthesia in the Ender, the McLaughlin and in the sliding-nail group wad 125, 131 and 145 minutes respectively. There was no significant difference in the occurrence of post-operative complications between the 3 groups. In the Ender group 56 per cent of the patients had technical complications compared with 23 per cent in the McLaughlin group. In the Ender group 14 per cent had second operations compared with only 3 per cent in the two other groups. The results at the 1-year follow-up examination were the best in the sliding-nail group. It was concluded that the use of the sliding nail carried great advantages compared with Ender nailing and McLaughlin nail plating.