History of External Skeletal Fixation

The concept of external skeletal fixation was introduced by Malgaigne in 1840, with a spike driven into the human tibia that was held by a strap encircling the limb. The first readily available external fixator, the Parkhill clamp, appeared in 1897. By the 1920s, a number of adaptations of pins or screws inserted into bone fragments for external control of reduction and fixation had been published. Important developments in that era were triangular half-pin units and anchoring bone pins in both cortices. The Stader splint, which was the first half-pin splint to provide reduction as well as fixation, was used by surgeons in the U.S. Navy during World War II. The Kirschner-Ehmer splint, a veterinary modification of the Anderson splint for humans, was introduced in 1947. Popularity of external skeletal fixation declined in the 1950s because of poor results that may have been caused by errors of application. Improvements in fixator configurations and the skill and judgment of surgeons led to the current acceptance of the method.