Cases in surgery illustrative of a new method in applying the wire ligature in compound fractures of the lower jaw / by Hugh Owen Thomas.

Hugh Owen Thomas

Date:: 1869

Credit: Cases in surgery illustrative of a new method in applying the wire ligature in compound fractures of the lower jaw / by Hugh Owen Thomas. Source: Wellcome Collection.

7/18 page 9

$passed through the opening at A, Next, the tubular needle was passed through B, into the open end of which the return end of the wire was introduced. Then the tubular needle was with¬ drawn, and with it the wire. The use of this needle is to act as a director to the internal opening of the aperture at B, and to obviate a second of delay in searching for the entrance from behind forwards of either openings A and B. After¬ wards the end of the wire at A was inserted into the slit of the key (fig. 5, PL I) and twisted in three or four coils, the same being repeated with the end of wire at B, until the fracture was fixed. On the fifth day it became slackened and required the use of the key in the coil at A or B—either would do—though it is best to choose the smallest coil for tightening, and to notice first if the cross-piece of the wire A (fig. 5) is well into the slit B (fig. 5), This case required tightening every three or four days. In twenty days the fracture was firm and united. The patient, from the commencement, expressed his ability to masticate, which I did not permit.$