BACKGROUND:

The purpose of this meta-analysis was to find out whether the proximal femoral nail was better than the dynamic hip screw in the treatment of trochanteric fractures with respect to operation time, blood transfusion, hospital stay, wound complications, number of reoperation, and mortality rate.

METHODS:

All randomized controlled trials comparing proximal femoral nail and dynamic hip screw in the treatment of trochanteric fractures were included. Articles and conference data were extracted by two authors independently. Data was analyzed using RevMan 5.1 version. Eight trials involving 1348 fractures were retrieved.

RESULTS:

Compared with DHS fixation, PFN fixation had similar operation time (95% CI: -15.28-2.40, P = 0.15). Blood loss and transfusion during perioperative time were also comparable between the two fixations (95% CI: -301.39-28.11, P = 0.10; 95% CI: -356.02-107.20, P = 0.29, resp.). Outcomes of hospital stay (95% CI: -0.62-1.01, P = 0.64), wound complication (95% CI: 0.66-1.67, P = 0.82), mortality (95% CI: 0.83-1.30, P = 0.72), and reoperation (95% CI: 0.61-1.54, P = 0.90) were all similar between the two groups.

CONCLUSION:

PFN fixation shows the same effectiveness as DHS fixation in the parameters measured.