Surgical results from treating children with syndactyly through the collective effort system at “SOS Hand Recife” between 2005 and 2009()

OBJECTIVE: to evaluate the results from and parents’ satisfaction with treatment for children with syndactyly who were operated at the “SOS Hand Recife” hospital between 2005 and 2009. METHODS: data for assessing the results were gathered from the patients’ medical files. The subjective scores, which were ascertained prospectively, were as follows: greater than or equal to 9, good result; between 6 and 8, fair result; less than 6, poor result. The results were analyzed statistically. This study was approved by the institution's ethics committee. RESULTS: among the 35 cases, 21 (60%) consisted of simple syndactyly and 14 (40%) were complex; 22 (62.8%) were boys and 13 (37.1%) were girls. The complex cases were predominantly among males. The main complications were infection (11.4%), bleeding (11.4%) and pain (8.6%). There were more complications in the complex cases (42.8%) than in the simple cases (33.3%). The mean scores from the parents’ subjective evaluations were as follows: 7.6 for esthetics (7.7 in simple cases and 7.3 in complex cases; 8.2 for function (8.6 in simple cases and 7.6 in complex cases); 8.3 for the parents’ general satisfaction level (8.6 in simple cases and 8.0 in complex cases); and 85.7% of the parents would recommend the surgery to others while 14.5% would not. A strong association was observed between the specialist's objective assessment and the scores given by the parents (p < 0.05). CONCLUSION: the surgical results from treating syndactyly presented differences between the simple and complex types, even though the parents’ esthetic evaluations and satisfaction were similar.