Case Report
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2017. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Orthop. Oct 18, 2017; 8(10): 809-813
Published online Oct 18, 2017. doi: 10.5312/wjo.v8.i10.809
Managing extremely distal periprosthetic femoral supracondylar fractures of total knee replacements - a new PHILOS-ophy
Kevin J Donnelly, Adam Tucker, Angel Ruiz, Neville W Thompson
Kevin J Donnelly, Adam Tucker, Angel Ruiz, Neville W Thompson, Department of Trauma and Orthopaedic Surgery, Altnagelvin Hospital, Londonderry BT47 6SB, Northern Ireland, United Kingdom
Author contributions: Donnelly KJ and Tucker A contributed equally to the paper in terms of literature review and writing of the paper; Ruiz A and Thompson NW developed operative technique and performed the surgery; Ruiz A and Thompson NW were also involved in the writing of the paper.
Institutional review board statement: The case report was exempt from the Institutional Review Board standard at Altnagelvin Area Hospital in Londonderry, Northern Ireland.
Informed consent statement: Both patients gave verbal consent for their inclusion in this manuscript and written consent for the operative intervention.
Conflict-of-interest statement: None of the authors have any conflict of interests to declare.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (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: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Correspondence to: Kevin J Donnelly, Specialist Registrar in Trauma and Orthopaedic Surgery, Department of Trauma and Orthopaedic Surgery, Altnagelvin Hospital, Glenshane Road Derry, Londonderry BT47 6SB, Northern Ireland, United Kingdom. kevin.donnelly@belfasttrust.hscni.net
Telephone: +44-28-71345171
Received: January 29, 2017
Peer-review started: February 13, 2017
First decision: June 14, 2017
Revised: August 21, 2017
Accepted: September 3, 2017
Article in press: September 4, 2017
Published online: October 18, 2017
Processing time: 261 Days and 5.7 Hours
Core Tip

Core tip: When dealing with periprosthetic fractures around a total knee replacement it is essential to consider the fracture site and configuration to allow selection of an implant that provides optimal fixation. When managing extremely distal femoral fractures a non-anatomic locking plate, such as Proximal Humeral Internal Locking System, may provide an option for fixation other than the available site-specific plates.