Remember me
Background The purpose of this study was to compare the risk of complex regional pain syndrome (CRPS) following surgical treatment of distal radius fractures (DRFs) with either a volar locking plate (VLP) or an external fixator (EF).
Methods Data from two randomized controlled trials (RCTs) were merged and analyzed. A logistic regression analysis was conducted to identify independent risk factors for the occurrence of CRPS.
Results A total of 322 patients were included from the two RCTs; 159 patients were operated upon with VLP and 163 patients with EF. CRPS was diagnosed in 6 patients treated with VLP (4%) and in 16 patients receiving EF (11%), overall 22 cases of CRPS (7%). None of the other independent risk factors had a significant influence on the risk for CRPS (all p > 0.05).
Conclusion Patients treated with an EF had a higher risk of developing CRPS compared to those treated with a VLP. We found no other independent variable predicting CRPS.
Level of evidence III.
Keywords complex regional pain syndrome - distal radius fracture - external fixator - volar locking plate - Budapest criteria Ethical Approval and Consent to ParticipateBoth RCTs were conducted according to the Declaration of Helsinki and approved by the local data protection officers. RCT1 was approved by the Regional Ethics Committee of Eastern Norway (ref. 2009/1517) and registered at www.ClinicalTrials.gov (NCT01062997). RCT2 was approved by the Regional Ethics Committee of Western Norway (ref 2013/555) and registered at ClinicalTrials.gov (NCT01904084). Written informed consent was obtained from all the patients.
The datasets generated and analyzed during the current study are not publicly available due to sensitive information but are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.
T.L. and O-L.H. collected and analyzed the data. T.L. and P-H.R. contributed to the study design, statistical analysis, and writing the manuscript. E.H.D. contributed to statistical analysis. J.M.F. and K.M. supervised and critically revised the manuscript. All authors approved the final manuscript.
Publication HistoryReceived: 04 March 2024
Accepted: 10 June 2024
Article published online:
04 September 2024
© 2024. The Author(s). This is an open access article published by Thieme under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonDerivative-NonCommercial License, permitting copying and reproduction so long as the original work is given appropriate credit. Contents may not be used for commercial purposes, or adapted, remixed, transformed or built upon. (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/)
Thieme Medical Publishers, Inc.
333 Seventh Avenue, 18th Floor, New York, NY 10001, USA
Comments (0)