ABSTRACT
Objective To review the effect of exposed and buried Kirschner wire fixation of lateral humeral condyle fracture in children.Methods Randomized control trials (RCTs) about exposed versus buried Kirschner wire fixation of lateral humeral condyle fracture in children were identified through electronic search using the Cochrane Collaboration search strategies and manual search.Electronic database included Cochrane Library,Medline,PubMed,CBM,VIP,CNKI,Wanfang database and other Chinese and English database.Manual research included related journals and conference proceedings.Quality analysis of the included literatures was performed using the methodological index for non-randomized studies (MINORS).RevMan 5.3 software was used for Meta analysis.Results Four studies involving exposed Kirschner in 150 cases and buried Kirschner in 351 cases were included.The two techniques were similar with respect to postoperative infection (OR =1.10,95％ CI 0.52 ～ 2.33,P ＞ 0.05),superficial infection (OR =1.45,95 ％ CI 0.66 ～ 3.18,P ＞ 0.05),reoperation rate (OR =2.29,95％CI 0.51 ～ 10.25,P ＞0.05),delayed union rate (OR =1.57,95％ CI 0.76 ～ 3.21,P ＞0.05) and total complications (OR =1.57,95％ CI 0.76 ～ 3.21,P ＞ 0.05).However,Kirschner wire exposure shortened the time of pulling out Kirschner wire (MD =-13.28,95％ CI-16.42 ～-10.14,P ＜0.05).Conclusion Applied for lateral humeral condyle fracture in children,exposed versus buried Kirschner wire fixation results in short Kirschner wire stabilization time that avoids local anesthetic and cost while pulling out Kirschner wire in the late stage.