Postoperative Management of Kirschner-Wire Fixation of All Phalangeal and Metacarpal Fractures at a Single Tertiary Care Center: A Retrospective Review
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Introduction: Kirschner-wire (K-wire) fixation (KF) is the most common operative technique for hand fractures among Canadian plastic surgeons. However, postoperative rehabilitation varies widely and rely on low-quality studies and expert opinion. The study reviewed KFs of phalangeal and metacarpal fractures at a single academic center to quantify practice variation and patient outcomes. Methods: This retrospective chart review analyzed all cases of KF of isolated phalangeal and metacarpal fractures performed by all plastic surgeons at a single tertiary care center in the last 7 years. The primary outcome was the duration from operation to K-wire removal. Secondary outcomes included the time from KF to range of motion (ROM) initiation, the interval between K-wire removal and ROM initiation, postoperative complications, and functional outcomes. Results: Among 289 patients, mean time from KF to K-wire removal was 28.6 days (SD 8.2). There was a high variability among the surgeons, with the shortest duration averaging 26 ± 6 days and the longest averaging 33.7 ± 8.6 days ( P < .001). Mean time to initiation of ROM was similar across surgeons (mean 25.2 ± 11.4 days). Postoperative complications occurred in 26 patients (10.9%), primarily pin site infections (6.7%). Early versus late K-wire removal did not affect complication rates. There were no differences in functional outcomes between surgeons. Conclusion: There is considerable variability in postoperative rehabilitation following KF of hand fractures among surgeons at a single academic center. Our study suggests that supervised ROM can be initiated safely as early as 3 weeks postoperatively, regardless of whether K-wires remain in situ.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.005 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.004 | 0.005 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".