Abstract
Breast carcinoma is the most common cause for bony metastases. Skeletal complications in women with meta-static breast carcinoma often occur multiple times in a single patient and significantly contribute to the patient morbidity. We describe a 62 year old lady with a known metastatic breast carcinoma who presented with simultaneous quadruple extremity diaphyseal long bone fractures after a trivial fall. To the author’s best knowledge, similar report has never been previously described in the literature.
The wish and general condition of the patient, and concurrent occurrence of four long bone fractures dictated the non-operative mode of treatment in this case.Where the life expectancy is assumed to be less than six weeks, the multidisciplinary team should give careful consideration on selection of best treatment choice between simultaneous or sequential surgical fixation of multiple long bone fractures and conservative palliative treatment. With treatment suited for an end-of-life circumstance, the educational lesson for dissemination to the readers is that in a patient where there is an extremely high likelihood of imminent perioperative mortality after sustaining quadruple extremity diaphyseal proximal long bone fractures simultaneously, conservative palliative treatment should be primarily considered over an aggressive operative fixation.
The abstracts were prepared by Mr Roger Tillman. Correspondence should be addressed to BOOS at the Royal College of Surgeons, 35–43 Lincoln’s Inn Fields, London WC2A 3PN
