Kannamani Saravanan, Shanmugam Sridevi, Gopalarathinam Sankamithra, Sethurajan Sethurajan Balasubramanian
BACKGROUND Faciomaxillary fractures are caused mainly by road traffic accidents and are often associated with life threatening emergency situations. They are treated extensively by open reduction and internal fixation with Stainless Steel Mini Plate (SSMP) implants in our medical college hospital. We come across miniplate exit on occasions. Hence, we decided to do a retrospective study on the subject of SSMP implant exit. The aim of the study is to find out the incidence and causes of SSMP implant exit following faciomaxillary fracture fixation over a period of three years. MATERIALS AND METHODS The case records of a total of 189 patients who had undergone faciomaxillary fracture fixation over a period of three years from Jan 2015 to Dec 2017 were perused with respect to the incidence and causes of SSMP implant removal. In addition, demographic parameters like age, sex and type of fracture, site of fracture, number of implants removed, and implant life in-situ were also analysed. RESULTS The SSMP implant exit was done in 14 cases (7.4 %); males-11, females-3. A total of 34 plates were removed. The commonest cause for implant exit was infection and the commonest site was body of mandible. CONCLUSION SSMP implants were well tolerated by most of the patients. SSMP implant exit was done in less than 10% of patients, the main reason being infection. This does not warrant a routine asymptomatic removal of SSMP implant in all cases.
