BMC Musculoskelet Disord. 2026 May 4. doi: 10.1186/s12891-026-09900-z. Online ahead of print.
ABSTRACT
BACKGROUND: The surgical rate for distal radius fractures is steadily rising despite limited evidence of its benefits over non-surgical treatment. Using a natural experimental approach, we aimed to compare patient-reported outcomes following surgical versus non-surgical treatment of distal radius fractures.
METHODS: Registered in the Swedish Fracture Register by 36 Swedish hospitals from 2013 to 2018, we included a cohort of 13,356 fractures on 13,031 patients aged 18 years or older with distal radius fractures Arbeitsgemeinschaft fur Osteosynthesefragen (AO) 23-A2.1-2, A3, and C1-C3. The observational study utilized differences in the frequency of surgical treatment across hospitals as a source of random treatment assignment and a natural experiment. We assumed that all hospitals encountered a similar range of fractures each year. Therefore, the annual frequency of surgery per hospital was used as a proxy for randomization between surgical and nonsurgical treatment, regardless of each patient’s actual treatment. The outcome was the individual Patient Reported Outcome Measures (PROM) at 1 year, with the Arm and Hand Function Index from the Short Musculoskeletal Function Assessment (SMFA) as the primary measure.
RESULTS: The surgical rate per hospital year ranged from 7 to 66%. Surgical treatment was associated with lower Arm and Hand Function Index scores in comminuted intraarticular fractures of type C2 (11.9 units, p = 0.004) and type C3 (19.4 units, p = 0.029). There was a tendency for a positive association with surgical treatment in dorsally angulated extraarticular fractures (23A2.2), but the difference of 5.1 units (p = 0.079) was below the Minimal Clinically Important Difference (MCID). In other extra-articular fractures (23-A2.1 and 23-A3) and simple intra-articular fractures (23-C1), the benefits of surgical treatment were small and also not statistically significant. Several sensitivity analyses were conducted to test the study design, and all supported the primary results.
CONCLUSIONS: In this comparison of surgical and non-surgical treatment for distal radius fractures across hospitals with varying surgical rates, comminuted intra-articular distal radius fractures (AO 23-C2/C3) treated surgically were associated with better one-year patient-reported outcomes than those treated non-surgically.
PMID:42082980 | DOI:10.1186/s12891-026-09900-z
