Results in cases of hip-joint disease treated by the portable traction splint without immobilization, except during the inflammatory stage of the disease / by Lewis A. Sayre.

  • Lewis Sayre
Date:
1892
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Results in cases of hip-joint disease treated by the portable traction splint without immobilization, except during the inflammatory stage of the disease / by Lewis A. Sayre. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    sometimes with little or no deformity. I was therefore re- quested by Mr. Adams to take charge of the case. No change was made in the mode of extension of the leg by the weight and pulley; but 1 removed the leather splint from around the thigh and pelvis, and, p issing a handkerchief around the upper part of the thigh, attached it to a cord, with a weight and pulley to make lateral traction * from the side of the bed, and fixed the body and well limb to a long splint, thus keeping the body in a horizontal position and absolutely at rest until the acute symptoms subsided and the limb was in iiroper position to apply a splint. Mr. Ernst, Mr. Adams’s instrument-maker, manufactured under my supervision a very perfect long splint, which I ap- plied to the boy in the last of August, 1877. In a very few days he was able to walk on this splint, with his sound leg elevated on a high shoe, without any pain, and could sit down with but very slight inconvenience. This splint was used by day, and the weight and pidley extension at night, the nurse having been very carefully instructed as to the proper application of the in- strument as well as the night extension. He returned to his home in Ireland in September, and Dr. Hobart, of Cork, ap- plied the Maw’s moleskin adhesive strips about every three months, or as often as necessary. This long splint was worn for eleven months, when he had so far improved that my short hip splint, with double perineal bands, was substituted for it. With this short splint he was able to get about very much more comfortably, jiarticularly in sitting down, as it gave full power to flex his knees, the lack of which is one of the objections to the long splint. He wore this sjjlint about a year, and when I removed it, in the fall of 1879, he was perfectly w-ell of the disease, with no perceptible de- formity and quite free motion of the joint. The limbs were of equal length, but the right one was much atrophied from want of use. He had a very competent nurse, who gave the limb massage and manipulation daily, carefully increasing the range of motion without exciting fresh inflammation, and in a few months the motions were as perfect in one joint as in the other, and have continued so. He was under treatment a little over two years. * As there has been considerable discussion as to priority in the ap- plication of lateral traction in lii])-joint disease, I may say that on look- ing over my notes I find that I applied it to L. A. McC. in 18G8 in the presence of Dr. L. M. Yale, this being the case to which I first applied a platform joint with abductuig screw with a short splint, the original drawing of which, by Dr. Yale, I found in my note-book.