Surgical and nonsurgical pediatric hand fractures: a cohort study

Hand fractures are common pediatric injuries,^1–7 but there are relatively few studies on their epidemiology.^1,2,4–14 Although most do well with immobilization alone, there is a subset of approximately 10%^{4–9,15–17} that require surgical intervention. It is common to describe a fracture by physical examination findings (eg, rotated or nonrotated) or radiographic findings (eg, angulation on anterior–posterior radiograph of 20°), but it is rare that surgical treatment is dictated by any one individual finding. The purpose of this study is to report on hand fractures in a large pediatric cohort of patients, which were managed either nonsurgically or surgically, and to identify the characteristics and patterns of fractures that required surgical correction.