Pan Nengfu

    Beihai, Guangxi, China 536000

An automatic press apparatus developed byProfessor Zhou Conglin and Zhou Xihua was used by 6 patients with senile fracture offemoral shaft. The apparatus was applied to help them with dirigation the next day afterthe open reduction and internal fixation. With the help of the machine, the ends offractures were made closed up automatically and fixed firmly. From the 1- to- 3- yearfollow-up survey for these 6 patients, 5 cases were found to have a complete recovery oftheir limb functions with the duration for the union being 11 to 17 weeks( 13 on average).Improvement was shown in one case who suffered from the nonunion accompanied with severknee-joint rigidity. The study shows the apparatus fixed on the surface of the femur canhelp to reduce the damage caused by the stress of bending, spinning or shearing from theends of fractures. By means of the machine and the dirigation at the early stage, a goodresult can be also achieved for the close union of fracture and longitudinal stress andthe time for bed rest is also reduced greatly.

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