Litang County, Ganzi Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, Sichuan Province, is located in China's most beautiful highway Line 318 into Tibet, its Tibetan culture and plateau scenery attract tourists from all over the country. The boom in tourism has also brought disasters such as car accidents and fractures. At the same time, daily labor such as grazing, riding horses, digging cordyceps, picking matsutake mushrooms, etc. can lead to traumatic fractures. Therefore, the Department of Orthopedics and Traumatology of Litang County Hospital has received a large number of patients with severe and complex trauma fractures.
Under the guidance of experts from major hospitals in Chengdu, the ability and experience of the Department of Orthopedics and Traumatology of Litang County Hospital to deal with complex traumatic fractures have made great progress. One of the most obvious changes is the application of minimally invasive concepts in traumatic fracture surgery.
A 79-year-old Tibetan aunt accidentally fell and fractured the femoral shaft, and from the X-ray, the fracture was misplaced and shrunk by 5 centimeters. Patients have concomitant internal diseases such as hypertension, pulmonary heart disease, osteoporosis, anemia and so on. Conventional surgery requires a 30-centimeter-long incision in the thigh and the installation of a femur grater plate, which is easier for orthopedic surgeons, but the huge trauma will be a heavy blow to the elderly's body.
Yang Xianchun (second from right), the leader of the branch medical team of the Third People's Hospital of Chengdu, carried out minimally invasive orthopedic surgery in Litang County.
Under the leadership of Dr. Yang Xianchun, Department of Orthopedics, Chengdu Third People's Hospital, the Department of Orthopedics and Traumatology of Litang County Hospital helped her with more minimally invasive and less complications of small incision reduction and intramedullary nail fixation surgery. Intramedullary nail fixation involves a steel nail similar in thickness to the femoral bone marrow cavity through a small incision of 2-3 cm through the femur, and the fracture is connected like a sugar gourd under X-ray machine perspective. In this way, the skin incision is smaller, and the periosteum at the fracture is reduced, the blood supply of the fracture is not interfered with, the healing is faster, and the purpose of minimally invasive treatment is truly realized. Moreover, the intramedullary needle is located in the center of the backbone, and the incidence of fracture is significantly lower than that of the eccentrically placed steel plate screws.
Yang Xianchun, the leader of the branch medical team of the Third People's Hospital of Chengdu, read the film in Litang County and planned the surgical plan
Yang Xianchun said that the difficulty of trauma fracture treatment is that no two traumas are exactly the same; each patient must be carefully weighed, and in the various treatment methods, which is the most beneficial to the patient. We are constantly exploring how to achieve maximum functional retention for patients with minimal cost. The minimally invasive treatment of trauma fractures is the trend of the times and the direction of the orthopedic department.
(China Daily Sichuan Reporter Station)