Figure - PMC

Skip to main content

An official website of the United States government

Here's how you know

Here's how you know

Official websites use .gov
A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States.

Secure .gov websites use HTTPS
A lock ( ) or https:// means you've safely connected to the .gov website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites.

View full-text article in PMC

. 2018 Dec 7;46(4):999–1008. doi: 10.1007/s00259-018-4218-6

Search in PMC
Search in PubMed
View in NLM Catalog
Add to search

© The Author(s) 2018

Open Access This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made.

PMC Copyright notice

Fig. 1 — A 59-year-old man sustained a right-sided Gustilo grade IIIB open crural fracture (a) which was treated with intramedullary nailing and a fasciotomy (b). After several soft-tissue debridement procedures, the remaining soft tissue defect was eventually closed with a free musculocutaneous flap. After 20 months, there was a non-union with “autodynamization” of the intramedullary nail, demonstrated by broken interlocking screws (c). The ¹⁸F-FDG PET image (d) shows increased uptake around the fracture site in the tibial shaft and around the proximal and distal screws. The hybrid ¹⁸F-FDG PET/CT images (e axial, f coronal, g sagittal) localize the suspected fracture-related infection (FRI) not only to the fracture site but also to the surrounding bone of the tibia around the fracture site which corresponds to the unstable scar overlapping the area of the non-union (h). The intramedullary nail was removed, the tibia was reamed, the fracture site was debrided and an in-house, custom-made antibiotic nail was inserted (I). FRI was confirmed by microbiological cultures and the patient was subsequently treated with antibiotics. One year after exchange nailing, fracture healing was successful (j)