The most frequent procedure used to treat ulnar impaction syndrome (UIS) is ulnar shortening osteotomy (USO). The arthroscopic wafer procedure (AWP) is an alternative to USO. There weren’t many studies that specifically compared USO with AWP in UIS patients. For a study, researchers compared AWP and ulnar shortening osteotomy (USO) for UIS treatments.
For studies released before March 2021, PubMed, EMBASE, the Cochrane Library, Wanfang, and CNKI were all thoroughly searched. The outcomes included time to resume manual labor, Modified Mayo Wrist Score, Darrow’s Criteria, Disability of Arm, Shoulder, and Hand (DASH), grip strength, and visual analog score (VAS) score.
There were 7 studies included (133 and 118 patients with USO and AWP, respectively). Darrow’s Criteria, along with Modified Mayo Wrist Score, Modified Mayo Wrist Score, Darrow’s Criteria, revision rate, DASH score, VAS score, and time to resume manual occupation—neither of which differed—were not different. The AWP improved grip strength (SMD=-0.73, 95% CI: -1.36, -0.11, P=0.022). USO was the beneficiary of differences in ulna positive variation (WMD=-2.75, 95%CI: -5.17, -0.33, P=0.026).
While USO appeared to have superior success in treating significant ulna positive variation, AWP may be related to increased grip strength in the surgical treatment of UIS. For the meta-analysis, the only evidence of mediocre quality was acceptable.
Reference: sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1743919122005027
