Table 1.

Inclusion and exclusion criteria applied.

Inclusion criteria	Exclusion criteria
Ambulatory patients sustaining a diaphyseal tibial fracture, either as an isolated injury or in the setting of poly trauma	Reviews, opinions, letters to the editor, case reports, protocols, conference proceedings, cadaveric studies, experimental or non-human studies
Anterograde intramedullary nail fixation of the tibial shaft fracture	Papers dealing exclusively with a paediatric population
Reported outcome measures of fracture union, non-union, mal-union or infection	Papers dealing exclusively with patients suffering from plateau, plafond or periprosthetic fractures
	Papers where the data are unavailable or uninterpretable and the authors are uncontactable
	Papers with less than 50 patients included
	Patients involved in severe poly trauma with as ISS >15
	Papers written in languages other than English