Retrospective Study
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2023. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Orthop. Jul 18, 2023; 14(7): 540-546
Published online Jul 18, 2023. doi: 10.5312/wjo.v14.i7.540
Locking plates for distal fibula fractures in young and elderly patients: A retrospective study
Francesco Roberto Evola, Giovanni Francesco Di Fede, Giuseppe Evola, Martina Barchitta, Antonella Agodi, Gianfranco Longo
Francesco Roberto Evola, Gianfranco Longo, Department of Surgery, Division of Orthopedics and Trauma Surgery, “Cannizzaro” Hospital, Catania 95100, Italy
Giovanni Francesco Di Fede, Department of Radiodiagnostics, Division of Radiology, “S. Marta and S. Venera” Hospital, Acireale 95024, Italy
Giuseppe Evola, Department of Surgery, Division of Surgery, “Garibaldi” Hospital, Catania 95100, Italy
Martina Barchitta, Antonella Agodi, Department of Medical and Surgical Sciences and Advanced Technologies “GF Ingrassia”, University of Catania, Catania 95100, Italy
Author contributions: All authors designed the study, acquired and interpreted the data, wrote the manuscript, and approved the final version of the article; Evola FR and Di Fede GF designed and performed the research; Evola FR and Evola G contributed to the literature research; Agodi A and Barchitta M analysed the data; Evola FR wrote the paper; Longo G revised the manuscript; All authors read and approved the final manuscript.
Institutional review board statement: The permission of this study was obtained from our Institutional Ethics Committee for the use of patient data for publication purpose (n°161/2020/CA).
Informed consent statement: Patients were not required to give informed consent to the study because the analysis used anonymous clinical data obtained after each patient agreed to treatment by written consent.
Conflict-of-interest statement: The authors declare that they have no conflicts of interest.
Data sharing statement: No additional data are available.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article that was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: https://creativecommons.org/Licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Corresponding author: Francesco Roberto Evola, MD, PhD, Additional Professor, Department of Surgery, Division of Orthopedics and Trauma Surgery, “Cannizzaro” Hospital, MESSINA n° 829, Catania 95100, Italy. robertoevola@virgilio.it
Received: December 29, 2022
Peer-review started: December 29, 2022
First decision: March 14, 2023
Revised: April 16, 2023
Accepted: June 6, 2023
Article in press: June 6, 2023
Published online: July 18, 2023
Processing time: 200 Days and 19.9 Hours
Core Tip

Core Tip: Ankle fractures are common injuries in the young and elderly populations. Fibula locking plate is used for the older population due to osteoporotic bone or for the younger population with multifragmentary and comminuted fractures. We introduced a new locking plate for fracture of the distal fibula and evaluated it for lateral malleolar fixation in terms of outcomes and complications in young and elderly patients. We were interested in determining whether the use of this locking plate would provide the same advantage and outcomes that were described in literature.