Soft-tissue sarcomas (STSs) are rare cancers with centralized care advocated to consolidate resources and expertise. However, geographical challenges, particularly in countries like Canada, can increase travel distances for patients. The impact of travel distance on sarcoma presentation and outcomes remains unclear, particularly in single-payer healthcare systems with centralized care. A retrospective cohort analysis was conducted on 1,570 patients with STS who underwent surgical resection at a Canadian tertiary referral centre between January 2010 and January 2021. Patients were divided into those living ≤ 50 km and > 50 km from the centre. Demographics, tumour characteristics, treatment methods, and survival outcomes were analyzed. A Cox regression model was constructed to evaluate predictors of overall survival.Aims
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The last five years have seen notable advancements in foot and ankle surgery as a result of technical innovations and more consistent reporting of results. Much progress has been made in improving patient-reported outcome measures, in the development of basic research in this area, and in the development of personalized approaches which optimize outcomes for specific groups of patients. This review focuses on five main areas of development within foot and ankle surgery: ankle arthroplasty, osteomyelitis and the diabetic foot, sports injuries, minimally invasive surgery, and orthobiologics. The aim of this annotation is to discuss the progress made in these fields during recent years and propose avenues for further development. Cite this article:
The risk of mortality after a hip fracture has been extensively investigated, but there is little high-quality information available dealing with the overall risk of complications. The aim of this study was to report the risk of complications in the first 120 days after a hip fracture. This was a multicentre, prospective cohort study of patients aged > 60 years with a hip fracture, involving 77 hospitals in England, Wales, and Northern Ireland, between January 2015 and 2022. The primary outcomes of interest were mortality and surgery-specific and general complications, at 120 days postoperatively.Aims
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One of the most common patient-reported complaints following intramedullary nailing (IMN) of tibial shaft fractures is anterior knee pain reported by 10% to 80% of patients. The present study aimed to compare the 12-month Knee injury and Osteoarthritis Outcome Score (KOOS) sport and recreation activities subscale (sport/rec) scores after IMN with external ring fixation (RF) to adult patients with tibial shaft fractures. This study was a pragmatic multicentre randomized, non-blinded trial, with two-group parallel design. Included were adult patients (aged ≥ 18 years) presenting with an acute tibial shaft fracture deemed operable with an intramedullary nail. The primary outcome was the KOOS sport/rec, ranging from 0 (worst score) to 100 (best score) at 12-month follow-up. Secondary outcomes included the Foot and Ankle Outcome Score (FAOS), health-related quality of life assessed by EuroQol five-dimension five-level health questionnaire, and pain scores.Aim
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Unicompartmental knee arthroplasty (UKA) is associated with an accelerated recovery, improved functional outcomes, and retention of anatomical knee kinematics when compared to manual total knee arthroplasty (mTKA). UKA is not universally employed by all surgeons as there is a higher revision risk when compared to mTKA. Robotic arm-assisted (ra) UKA enables the surgeon to position the prosthesis more accurately when compared to manual UKA, and is associated with improved functional outcomes and a lower early revision risk. Non-randomized data suggests that, when compared to mTKA, raUKA has a clinically meaningful greater functional benefit. This protocol describes a randomized controlled trial that aims to evaluate the clinical and cost-effectiveness of raUKA compared to mTKA for individuals with isolated medial compartment osteoarthritis (OA). The total versus robotic-assisted unicompartmental knee arthroplasty (TRAKER) trial is a patient- and assessor-blinded, pragmatic parallel two-arm randomized superiority trial of adults undergoing elective primary knee arthroplasty for primary medial compartment OA at a single NHS hospital (ClinicalTrials.gov NCT05290818). Participants will be randomly allocated on a 1:2 basis to either raUKA or mTKA, respectively. The primary analysis will compare the Oxford Knee Score (OKS) six months after surgery. Secondary outcomes measured at three, six, and 12 months include the OKS, Forgotten Joint Score, patient expectations, EuroQol five-dimension questionnaire (EQ-5D), and EQ-visual analogue scale (EQ-VAS), patient satisfaction, range of motion, postoperative complications, need for further surgery, resource use, and financial costs. Cost-effectiveness will be measured over a ten-year time span. A total of 159 patients will be randomized (n = 53 raUKA vs n = 106 mTKA) to obtain 80% power to detect a five-point difference in OKS between the groups six months after surgery.Aims
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The Bracing Adolescent Idiopathic Scoliosis (BASIS) study is a randomized controlled non-inferiority pragmatic trial of ‘full-time bracing’ (FTB) compared to ‘night-time bracing’ (NTB) for the treatment of adolescent idiopathic scoliosis (AIS). We anticipated that recruiting patients to BASIS would be challenging, as it is a paediatric trial comparing two markedly different bracing pathways. No previous studies have compared the experiences of AIS patients treated with FTB to those treated with NTB. This qualitative study was embedded in BASIS to explore families’ perspectives of BASIS, to inform trial communication, and to identify strategies to support patients treated in a brace. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with parents (n = 26) and young people (n = 21) who had been invited to participate in BASIS at ten of the 22 UK paediatric spine services in hospitals recruiting to BASIS. Audio-recorded interviews were transcribed and analyzed thematically.Aims
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Autologous bone graft (ABG) is considered the ‘gold standard’ among graft materials for bone regeneration. However, complications including limited availability, donor site morbidity, and deterioration of regenerative capacity over time have been reported. P-15 is a synthetic peptide that mimics the cell binding domain of Type-I collagen. This peptide stimulates new bone formation by enhancing osteogenic cell attachment, proliferation, and differentiation. The objective of this study was to conduct a systematic literature review to determine the clinical efficacy and safety of P-15 peptide in bone regeneration throughout the skeletal system. PubMed, Embase, Web of Science, and Cochrane Library were searched for relevant articles on 13 May 2023. The systematic review was reported according to the PRISMA guidelines. Two reviewers independently screened and assessed the identified articles. Quality assessment was conducted using the methodological index for non-randomized studies and the risk of bias assessment tool for randomized controlled trials.Aims
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The February 2025 Trauma Roundup360 looks at: Risk factors for nonunion in femoral neck fracture patients with internal fixation: a multicentre (TRON group) retrospective study; Tranexamic acid administered at time of hospital admission does not decrease transfusion rates or blood loss for extracapsular hip fractures; The effect of anterior support screw (AS2) in unstable femoral trochanteric fractures; The effect of coronal plane angulation on patient-reported outcome measures of operatively treated distal femur fractures; Do proximal humerus fractures treated nonoperatively benefit from supervised physiotherapy?; Cephalomedullary nails: are dual lag screws superior to single lag screws?; Does cement need to be pressurized for hemiarthroplasty?.
Aims. Older adults with hip fractures are at high risk of experiencing complications after surgery, but estimates of the rate of specific complications vary by study design and follow-up period. The aim of this systematic review was to determine the prevalence of complications in older adults after hip fracture surgery. Methods. MEDLINE, Embase, CINAHL, and CENTRAL databases were searched from inception until 30 June 2023. Studies were included if they reported prevalence data of complications in an unselected, consecutive population of older adults (aged ≥ 60 years) undergoing hip fracture surgery. Results. A total of 95 studies representing 2,521,300 patients were included. For surgery-specific complications, the 30-day prevalence of reoperation was 2.31%, surgical site infection 1.69%, and deep surgical site infection 0.98%; the 365-day prevalence of prosthesis dislocation was 1.11%, fixation failure 1.77%, and periprosthetic or peri-implant fracture 2.23%. For general complications, the 30-day prevalence of acute kidney injury was 1.21%, blood transfusion 25.55%, cerebrovascular accident 0.79%, lower respiratory tract infection 4.08%, myocardial infarction 1.98%, urinary tract infection 7.01%, and venous thromboembolism 2.15%. Conclusion. Complications are prevalent in older adults who have had surgery for a hip fracture. Studies reporting complications after hip fracture surgery varied widely in terms of quality, and we advocate for the routine monitoring of complications in registries and
To evaluate the concurrent use of vancomycin and ε-aminocaproic acid (EACA) in primary total hip arthroplasty (THA). In total, 120 patients undergoing unilateral primary THA were divided into three groups: Group VE received intra-articular vancomycin and EACA; Group V received only intra-articular vancomycin; and Group E received only intra-articular EACA. Blood and joint fluids were sampled postoperatively to measure the vancomycin levels using chromatography. Blood loss and kidney function were monitored.Aims
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The February 2025 Wrist & Hand Roundup360 looks at: Delayed fixation of distal radial fractures beyond three weeks increases the odds of reoperation; A systematic review of management options for symptomatic scaphometacarpal impingement after trapeziectomy; Diagnosing occult scaphoid fractures: an art or science?; Dual-mobility trapeziometacarpal arthroplasty shows promising outcomes but lacks long-term evidence; 3D-printed titanium scaphoid implant offers a promising alternative for unreconstructable scaphoid nonunion; Lidocaine co-injection reduces pain intensity during corticosteroid injections in hand and wrist conditions; Long-term outcomes of PyroDisk arthroplasty for trapeziometacarpal osteoarthritis; Evaluating the impact of COVID-19 on hand surgery practices: adaptations and missed opportunities.
The aim of this study was to evaluate the suitability, against an accepted international standard, of a linked hip fracture registry and routinely collected administrative dataset in England to embed and deliver randomized controlled trials (RCTs). First, a bespoke cohort of individuals sustaining hip fractures between 2011 and 2016 was generated from the National Hip Fracture Database (NHFD) and linked to individual Hospital Episode Statistics (HES) records and mortality data. Second, in order to explore the availability and distribution of outcomes available in linked HES-Office of National Statistics (ONS) data, a more contemporary cohort with incident hip fracture was identified within HES between January 2014 and December 2018. Distributions of the outcomes within the HES-ONS dataset were reported using standard statistical summaries; descriptive characteristics of the NHFD and linked HES-ONS dataset were reported in line with the Clinical Trials Transformation Initiative recommendations for registry-enabled trials.Aims
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While cementless fixation offers potential advantages over cemented fixation, such as a shorter operating time, concerns linger over its higher cost and increased risk of periprosthetic fractures. If the risk of fracture can be forecasted, it would aid the shared decision-making process related to cementless stems. Our study aimed to develop and validate predictive models of periprosthetic femoral fracture (PPFF) necessitating revision and reoperation after elective total hip arthroplasty (THA). We included 154,519 primary elective THAs from the Swedish Arthroplasty Register (SAR), encompassing 21 patient-, surgical-, and implant-specific features, for model derivation and validation in predicting 30-day, 60-day, 90-day, and one-year revision and reoperation due to PPFF. Model performance was tested using the area under the curve (AUC), and feature importance was identified in the best-performing algorithm.Aims
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Ultrasound-guided injection techniques are expected to enhance therapeutic efficacy for skeletal muscle injuries and disorders, but basic knowledge is lacking. The purpose of this study was to examine the diagnostic accuracy of ultrasound for abnormal skeletal muscle lesions, and to examine the distribution patterns of solution and cells injected into abnormal muscle lesions under ultrasound guidance. A cardiotoxin (CTX)-induced muscle injury model was used. Briefly, CTX was injected into tibialis anterior muscle in rats under ultrasound observation. First, the diagnostic accuracy of abnormal muscle lesions on ultrasound was examined by comparing ultrasound findings and histology. Next, Fast Green solution and green fluorescent protein (GFP)-labelled cells were simultaneously injected into the abnormal muscle lesions under ultrasound guidance, and their distribution was evaluated.Aims
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