Amazing Thighbone

At England General Hospital in Atlantic City last week was a wounded soldier with a strangely mended femur (thighbone). The man had been treated by the Germans, his captors.

When the broken bone failed to heal, after weeks of conventional treatment, the soldier was operated on. He was mystified to find that his only new wound was a 2 1/2-inch incision above the hipbone. Two days later, the German surgeons told him to move his leg; a few days after that, they told him to walk. He did. He has walked ever since.

After his exchange, U.S. Army doctors X-rayed the soldier's leg. They were amazed at what they saw: a half-inch metal rod of some kind had been rammed down the thighbone through the marrow for three-quarters of the bone's length, thus supplying a permanent, internal splint.

Mechanically, the surgeons agree, there is no reason such a splint should not work if the lower end of the rod were firmly wedged in hard tissue. But in the past, use of internal splints has been restricted to slim wire to align broken bones in fingers, toes and arms. In such cases, outside splinting is also used and the mended bones are not required to withstand any end-to-end pressure. They call the rod technique "a daring operation" and wonder how their German colleagues insert it without dangerously cutting down blood supply and without introducing infection. Surgeons at the hospital cautiously say they "have no opinion one way or another about this case." But they add that they are not quite satisfied with the way the bone is mending around the metal crutch, possibly because of impaired circulation.

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