Salt Lake Tribune | 1904-06-24 | Page 11 | With Silver Bolt Joins Broken Bone

With Silver, Bolt Joins Erokea Bone Baltimore Suxgeon Improves Upon tho Old Methods of Treating Practures. BALTIMORE, Md., June 23. Dr. Stephen II. Watts, assistant resident resi-dent surgeon at the Johns Hopkins hospital, has devised a method of joining broken bones that Is attracting wide interest among surgeons. His device de-vice consists of a silver bolt and nut and is simplicity itself. The fractured bone Is exposed by a simple operation and the broken bones are mortised just as a carpenter mortises the ends of two pieces of wood he desires to join. Then a small hole Is drilled through the Joint thus made and a silver bolt Is Inserted. When the nut Is screwed down the Joint is Immovable and the natural knitting of the bone may proceed without the interruption usually caused by change in position and lnck of ragldlty. Dr. Watts tested this method for the first time a year ago and has since then used it with success. His first patient was a man who had suffered bad fractures frac-tures of both legs In an accident in a atone quarry. It was found necessary to amputate the right leg to save the patient's life, but the left seemed to offer hope of success. At the end of two months the ordinary treatment, with the use of a plaster cast to hold tho limb rigid, failed to result in the knitting of the bone. Then the possibility that a silver bolt might hold the broken ends together occurred oc-curred to Dr. Watts, and he resolved to attempt the experiment, A bolt 1 Inches long and S-32 of an inch in diameter diam-eter was use. After it was in place and the wound.had been sewer up. the usu-'i plaster casts were again applied. In a few months the patient was discharged dis-charged as cured. Ordinarily surgeons wrap the silver wire around the break to hold the fractured frac-tured bone rigid, but this method has many disadvantages. Dr. Watts's plan Is more cerfain and there is no danger of the fastening breaking, as Is the case when wire Is used. The bolt In the bone seems to cause no permanent ill effect, or. at least, no more than Is felt by the presence of the silver plate in a trepanned skull. Buried silver sutures, even In Infected wounds, rarely cause trouble. The chief objection to Dr. Watts's method Is the fact that cutting tho mortise mor-tise in the ends of the broken bono considerably con-siderably shortens it. But in many fractures the break is on on angle, and in such cases natural mortises are offered. of-fered. The presence of the boult in the bone also weakens It, but this weakening weaken-ing is overcome by a compensatory enlargement en-largement of tho bone.