Fracture of an expandable intramedullary nail. Surgical technique for nail removal


Published online: Apr 27 2009

Oguz Poyanli, Koray Unay, Kaya Akan, Korhan Ozkan, Melih Guven

From Göztepe Research and Training Hospital, Istanbul, Turkey

Abstract

Intramedullary nailing with expandable nails is one of the techniques available for the treatment of fractures of long bones. Concerns regarding bony union have been reported in medical literature, but no case of femoral nail breakage secondary to delayed union has been reported to date. We present a case of a broken expandable femoral nail secondary to delayed union, and we describe the technique used for its extraction.