Orthopaedic Surgery (Oct 2020)

Prediction of the Size of the Fragment in Comminuted Coronoid Fracture Using the Contralateral Side: An Analysis of Similarity of Bilateral Ulnar Coronoid Morphology

  • Hai‐long Zhang,
  • Kun‐Jhih Lin,
  • Yi Lu

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1111/os.12780
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 12, no. 5
pp. 1495 – 1502

Abstract

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Objective To evaluate the morphological similarity of bilateral coronoid process. Methods A total of 128 sets of computed tomography images of bilateral coronoid process from patients between January 2015 and December 2016 were acquired for three‐dimensional reconstruction to generate a coronoid process model. The patients were aged between 31.4 ± 9.3 years. The upper 40% of the coronoid process was trimmed as targeted fragment for morphological analysis. The height, length, width as well as the radius of the medial and lateral facet of the targeted fragment were compared in terms of laterality, age, and gender. To evaluate the similarity of the articular surface of the coronoid process, a local coordinate was created and coordinate transformation algorithm was developed to realign the bilateral coronoid process for the following matching. Then Delaunay triangulation was introduced for calculation of the area of the articular surface. After matching of articular surface of the upper 40% of bilateral coronoid process, the overlapping area of the articular surface was quantified to assess the similarity in morphology and compared in regard to age and gender. Results In this study, the height of the target fragment was 12.40 ± 2.74 mm, which was 12.62 ± 2.06 mm for male patients and 12.13 ± 3.76 mm for female patients (t = 0.94, P = 0.35). The height of the target fragment was 12.79 ± 1.76 mm for patients >40 years and 13.23 ± 3.16 mm for patients 40 years and 23.23 ± 2.14 mm for patients 40 years and 23.46 ± 3.38 mm for patients 40 years and 6.46 ± 0.94 mm for patients 40 years and 12.46 ± 3.94 mm for patients 40 years and it was 87.4% ± 13.2% for patients <40 years (t = 0.98, P = 0.33). Conclusions The present study suggested that bilateral coronoid process shares high similarity in terms of 3D structure and articular surface morphology, which suggested that the osseous architecture of the coronoid process with comminuted fracture could be predicted by the morphological information of the contralateral side.

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