ABSTRACT
BACKGROUND: Floating elbow injuries are complex injuries. Due to frequent association with severe soft tissue injuries and polytrauma, they have unpredictable functional outcome. This prospective study is aimed to evaluate the factors affecting functional outcome. METHODS: Thirty patients with floating elbow injuries were treated at a level 1 trauma center from July 2018 to June 2019 with minimum follow-up of 9 months. The outcome was assessed by disability for arm shoulder and hand score (DASH) and mayo elbow performance score (MEPS). RESULTS: The overall incidence was 16.09 per 1000, mostly caused by road traffic accidents and all cases were managed surgically. Age, gender, education, occupation, arm dominance, and mechanism of injury did not significantly affect the outcomes. Open fractures and patients requiring staged procedure were associated with poorer outcomes (p < 0.05); however, delay in surgery for more than 24 h significantly increased the rate of complications. There was no statistical difference in the proportion of patients who had nerve injury pre operatively and post operatively on the final outcome. CONCLUSION: Floating elbow injuries are relatively rare but nowadays the numbers are on the rise. Timely intervention with a multimodal approach and well-supervised rehabilitation can assure better final outcome.
ABSTRACT
BACKGROUND: Early prediction of response to therapy may offer the potential to identify patients who will benefit from standard conventional therapy. The objective of this study was to determine the predictive value of FDG-PET as an early response indicator after 1 cycle of chemotherapy for progression-free survival (PFS) in diffuse large cell lymphoma (DLCL) and classic Hodgkin disease (HD). METHODS: FDG-PET was performed before, after 1 cycle, and after completion of chemotherapy in 47 patients. The patients were followed with a median follow-up of 21 months (range, 3-47 months). PFS was compared between PET-positive and PET-negative patients after 1 cycle and after completion of therapy. RESULTS: All PET-negative patients after 1 cycle (n = 31) had sustained complete remission with a median follow-up of 28 months. Fourteen of 16 PET-positive patients after 1 cycle had refractory disease or relapsed (median PFS, 5.5 months). There were 2 false-positive results, 1 with an active infection at the biopsy site and the other in a patient who had been in remission after radiation therapy. There was good agreement between the results obtained after 1 cycle and at completion of therapy (kappa, 0.80); however, the negative predictive value was higher for FDG-PET after 1 cycle than after completion of chemotherapy (100% vs 91.4%), although not statistically different (P = .40). CONCLUSIONS: FDG-PET had a high prognostic value after 1 cycle of chemotherapy, thus it can be a valid alternative for posttreatment evaluation of DLCL and HD and may offer the potential for change in treatment paradigms.
