Cooling during drilling Kirschner wires is not always effective in preventing thermal related damage. In this study, we used a human in vitro model and compared temperature elevation, insertion time, and extraction force between three Kirschner wire insertion methods-drilling with and without irrigation and pneumatic hammering. Forty five Kirschner wires were inserted into 15 fresh human cadave...

PURPOSE. To evaluate the outcome of percutaneous release of the A1 pulley in 40 cadaveric fingers using a modified Kirschner wire. METHODS. A 2.5-mm-diameter Kirschner wire measuring >12 cm in length was used. One end of the wire was sharpened into a 'J' shape using a grinder. The J-shaped tip featured a blunt, elongated lower tip, a sharp J-shaped curve, and a blunt upper tip. Completeness of ...

We describe a simple method of inserting the distal screws in a locked femoral nail. The method requires no aiming device and no assistant. The only equipment needed is a 3 mm Kirschner wire and an air drill.

Kirschner wires are commonly used to stabilise fractures in children. There is a wide range of practice across the United Kingdom with regard to their removal, with some units routinely readmitting children for removal of wires under a general anaesthetic and others leaving the wires long and extracting them in the outpatient clinic. In a prospective study performed at The Barts and Royal Londo...

PURPOSE To compare 5 different Kirschner wire fixation techniques in terms of the failure loads seen as scapholunate (SL) dissociation in a cadaveric, biomechanical study. METHODS 10 fresh-frozen, finger-amputated wrists with sectioned SL ligaments from 3 male and 2 female cadavers were tested. The change of SL angle, SL dissociation, and the load to failure of the 5 different Kirschner wire ...

The article which appeared in the Jubilee Issue of the New Zealand Veterinary Journal (Marshall and Manktelow 2002) reviewed one of this country's most important zoonotic diseases. I wish to add three important references concerning its first recognition in livestock and humans in New Zealand. The first field cases of leptospirosis in calves due to Leptospira pomona (now L. interrogans serovar ...

Bill Martin studied biology at Texas A&M and the University of Hannover. He did his PhD at the Max-Planck Institute for Breeding Research in Cologne under the generous supervision of Heinz Saedler, who discovered the transposons known as IS elements. After fi nishing his PhD in 1988, he did his postdoctoral work on chloroplastcytosol isoenzymes, endosymbiosis, and gene transfer at the Universit...

Martin Nowak is Head of the Program in Theoretical Biology at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. He will move to Harvard University later this year. Nowak’s work initiated the field of virus dynamics — the mathematical description of how viruses spread within infected individuals. This led to a quantitative understanding of HIV infection (see ‘Virus dynamics’, by Martin Nowak and Ro...

Sixteen cases of dorsal transscaphoid perilunate fracture/dislocations in 15 patients were treated by open reduction and internal fixation of the scaphoid with a Herbert screw and/or Kirschner wires. All patients were male, with a mean age of 31 years. The average follow-up period was 3 years. These perilunate dislocations were transscaphoid in 13 cases, and transstyloid and transscaphoid in 3 ...