Defining Cephalomedullary Nail Breakage Rates: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

To establish the background rate of breakage of cephalomedullary nails.

MEDLINE, PubMed, and Web of Science were searched on April 3, 2023.

All English-language studies that examined trochanteric with or without subtrochanteric fractures and identified cephalomedullary nail breakage as an outcome measure and a breakage rate could be derived were included. Implants captured were predominantly the TFNA, TFN, and PFN by DePuy Synthes, various versions of the Gamma nail by Stryker, the Zimmer Natural Nail by Zimmer Biomet, and the Intertan by Smith and Nephew.

The author, year of publication, dates of implant insertion, study design, method of detection of breakages, implant used, number of implant breakages, number of implants inserted, breakage rate, and follow-up were extracted.

Meta-analysis of included studies used descriptive nonparametric statistics and a noncomparative proportion for the pooled result. Differences in results between study design types were compared using the mean breakage rate per study design.

Cephalomedullary nail breakage is a rare complication with a median reported rate of 0.6% and a pooled result rate of 0.4%. Ninety-five percent of studies had a breakage rate of 1.3% or less, which sets a benchmark from the reported literature for future studies. There is wide variability in rates of breakage reported between different types of study designs with single-center review studies reporting breakage rates nearly 4-fold greater than large-scale administrative database reviews. The rate of implant breakage should not be used in isolation to judge an implant's performance.

Therapeutic Level IV. See Instructions for Authors for a complete description of levels of evidence.