Polypropylene prosthesis for the treatment of fingertip injuries. Description of surgical technique and results()

OBJECTIVE: Report the results of treatment of fingertip injuries and describe this reproducible and low cost surgical technique, which utilizes a polypropylene prosthesis that temporarily replaces the nail and is placed on the area of injury, providing protection and encouragement for healing by secondary intention. METHOD: This study evaluated 22 patients with traumatic injuries of the fingertips in the period from January 2012 to December 2015. All procedures were performed by the same surgeon. The mean postoperative follow-up was 13 months, with a minimum follow-up of six months. For all statistical inferences, a p-value of 0.05 was considered. The software used was SPSS version 21.0 for Windows. RESULTS: There were no cases of complications related to the polypropylene device. There was no significant difference between static two-point discrimination and age, between discrimination and time between injury and surgery, or between discrimination and time to follow-up. The authors used a table of scores that includes three factors proposed by Jefferson for a better evaluation of the results. 72.7% (16 cases) of patients had good results, 22.7% (five cases) fair results, and only 4.5% (one case) poor result. CONCLUSION: This study presented a new technique for finger tip lesions, simple and easily reproducible, with satisfactory results and low complication rates.