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Broken wrists are among the most common injuries in children accounting for about half of children's fractures. Severely displaced distal radial fractures, where the bones move out of place, are often routinely treated with surgery. However – unlike adults - children have a remarkable ability to straighten broken bones, in a process called remodelling.
Researchers questioned whether a plaster cast would achieve the same long-term result without exposing children to the risks of an operation.
Professor Matt Costa, senior author and Professor, Orthopaedics Trauma Surgery at the Kadoorie Institute, University of Oxford said: 'These fractures can look very severe on an X-ray, which has traditionally led to surgery to straighten the bone. But because children's bones are still growing, they have a remarkable capacity to heal. Until now, there has been limited high-quality evidence on whether surgery was always necessary.'
The CRAFFT trial (Children's Radius Acute Fracture Fixation Trial) was funded by the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) and supported by the NIHR Biomedical Research Centre: Oxford. It recruited 750 children aged 4–10 from 49 hospitals across the UK. Participants were randomly assigned to receive either surgical fixation or treatment with a plaster cast.