Definition, classification and treatment of destructive fractures

Destructive injury is defined as a very serious damage both to the bone and the soft tissues. But in clinical practice we found that in some fracture cases, the damage to soft tissues is not as severe as "destructive injury" indicates, whereas comminuted fractures still cannot show the severity of bone damage. Therefore we proposed a new term "destructive fractures" after combining the definition of destructive injury with typical clinic cases. Destructive fractures refer to the fractures whose osseous tissues are damaged too seriously to be repaired, but soft tissues, nerves and veins are less severely injured and can be repaired. From the year 2001 to 2010, 75 cases of destructive fractures were admitted in our department. According to whether the fractures interlinked with the external environment, together with the fracture sites, they were divided into 6 types: a1 type, closed diaphysis destructive fracture; a2 type, open diaphysis destructive fracture; b1 type, closed joint-involved destructive fracture; b2 type, open joint-involved destructive fracture; c1 type, closed mixed destructive fracture; c2 type, open mixed destructive fracture. Corresponding clinical treatments were conducted for each type.The new classification criterion of destructive fracture is simple and practical and thus can be used as an important guide to make reasonable treatment plans for destructive fractures.