[Conservative treatment of fractures of the long bones during the growth phase]

In the treatment of fractures of the long bones in children and adolescents, surgical and conservative methods are not mutually exclusive alternatives; rather, each can complement the other in the overall treatment strategy. Many operative procedures, such as fixation of juxtaarticular, metaphyseal fractures, need to be supplemented by conservative procedures, such as immobilization by means of casts. We refer to methods that are performed without anaesthesia and do not involve the implantation of osteosynthetic foreign material as conservative. These are: immobilization with no further treatment, plaster wedging, and functional treatment options. The indications for purely conservative treatment strategies are basically different for articular and nonarticular fractures. Whereas in the case of articular fractures only the nondisplaced fractures are treated by conservative methods, in the case of nonarticular (shaft) fractures those involving a degree of displacement, as long as it is not too pronounced to allow the integration of spontaneous corrections, can also be treated conservatively.