Adding Fracture Bracing for Humeral Shaft Fractures
A network meta-analysis gives you all you need to decide where and when to deploy an underutilized nonsurgical approach.
What’s the Claim?
A high-quality network meta-analysis comparing treatments of humeral shaft fractures from 21 RCTs found:
- All surgical treatments studied — ORIF, minimally invasive plating, and IM nails — beat fracture bracing in terms of achieving fracture union (94% to 99% for the surgical options vs. 83% for bracing) and avoiding secondary surgery (1% to 8% vs. 21%)
- Fracture bracing resulted in lower odds of radial nerve palsy (0.5% vs. 2% to 6%) and deep infection (0% vs. 1% to 2%) than surgery
- The study made claims about time to union favoring surgery, but those differences are not as robust
