Background:

Radius fracture represents 17-20% of total injuries treated in emergency rooms, being the most common fracture of upper extremity with incidence of 100-350/100,000 cases per year.

Objective:

To determine if external fixation with supplementary interfragmentary Kirschner wires results into a better functional result.

Material and methods:

Descriptive, observational, transverse study, from January to December 2012, including surgery results of distal radius fracture clasification AO23C1 in women upper of 65 years old treated with external fixation with or without supplementary wires.

Results:

for the group of patients with supplementary wires 87.5% (n = 14) observed good results, and 12.5% (n = 2) bad ones; for the group without supplementary wires 90.90% (n = 10) observed good results, and 9.09% (n = 1) bad one.

Conclusions:

Adding supplementary wires to external fixation is not statistically significant.