Cardiopulmonary response to reamed intramedullary nailing of the femur with a traditional reaming system and a one-step reamer-irrigator-aspirator reaming system; an experimental study in pigs

Introduction There is general agreement that early internal stabilization in long bone fractures in severely injured patients is advantageous. Intramedullary reaming and nailing, however, include increased intramedullary pressure. This may cause intravasation of bone marrow contents, leading to bone marrow embolisation and altered cardiopulmonary function. Possible beneficial effects of attenuation of the intramedullary pressure increase by the use of a reamerirrigator-aspirator (RIA) system were studied with the hypothesis that the RIA technique would cause lower numbers of pulmonary embolisms and lesser cardiopulmonary affection than after traditional reaming (TR).