Is The Selected Surgical Technique Effect The Result In Pediatric Forearm Fractures Treated As Surgical?

Introduction; Forearm fractures are common injuries in children and account for 41.1% of pediatric fractures. According to recently published literature, there is a tendency towards more effective treatment of this injury which is frequently seen in childhood. Especially in the second half of the 20th century, there is an increase in the choice of surgical treatment in the treatment of upper extremity injuries in children. However, immobilization with closed reduction and circular casting in minimal deplase and stabilized forearm fractures continues to be the gold standard treatment method. The purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of the selected technique on the surgically treated pediatric forearm fractures. Patients and Methods; Pediatric patients surgically treated for forearm fracture in the Orthopedics and Traumatology Department of Mengücek Gazi Research and Training Hospital, Erzincan University between the years of 2014-2017 were evaluated retrospectively. A total of 40 patients participated in the study. Patients were divided into 2 groups; open surgery patients and closed surgery patients. Patients' gender, age, the length of stay in the hospital (days), duration of union (week) and treatment costs were recorded. The comparison between the two groups was made using the non-parametric Mann-Whitney-U test for numerical data. Comparisons of categorical data were made by Pearson Chi-square test. Results; Twenty-one of the patients included in the study were treated by open surgery and 19 by closed surgery. Thirty-three of the patients were male and 8 of them were female. There was no statistically significant difference between the sexes according to surgical treatment method (p: 0,163). As the ages of the treated patients increased, the rate of open surgery increased (p: 0.001). In addition, statistically, the patients who underwent open surgery were in hospital longer (p: 0.016). There was no statistically significant difference between the two groups (p: 0,349) when the union times of the patients treated with open and closed surgical techniques were evaluated. However, when comparing the total treatment cost between the two groups, it was seen that the cost ratio was higher in open surgical structures (p <0.001). Conclusion; Literature review shows that fixation with intramedullary fixation and open reduction in pediatric forearm fractures is the most commonly used technique. However, there are no clear conclusions that a technique is superior to the other. In our data, the duration of hospitalization in the open surgery group