A Study of Surgical Management of Floating Knee in Adults

Abstract

Background: Floating knee injury is a term used to denote ipsilateral femoral and tibial metaphyseal injuries. But recent literature has however expanded this term to include most ipsilateral fractures of the femur and tibia. These areextremely heterogeneous groups of injuries. They usually occur due to very high energy trauma. These are relativelyuncommon injuries. These are always associated with high morbidity. Most of these injuries result in some permanent disability. There are no specific guidelines for the management. The implant choice needs to be determined depending onnature of fracture and soft tissue injuries.

Material and Methods: This study is about the Functional Outcome of Surgical Managements of Floating Knee For this study 17 consecutive patients with ipsilateral femur and tibia fractures, All cases of ipsilateral tibia and femur fractures were included. Study duration of two years. Detailed history will be obtained using Performa with special attention to mechanism of injury. Evaluations including base line clinical features. Examination of other associated symptoms will bebased on history and physical examination. The plan of management for the given patient was made depending on the nature of fracture, location of fracture, associated soft tissue injuries.

Conclusion: Patients who undergo primary nailing will have Excellent or Good results. The most important factors which determine the functional outcomes were the  type of fractures (open or closed), nature of comminution including intraarticular extensions, timing of fixations and post operative infections.

Keywords: Floating knee; primary nailing, intraarticular extension, comminution, metaphysic.