The use of easily wearable lightweight plastic body casts in the outpatient treatment of elderly patients with vertebral fractures: Clinical results.

Abstract

In order to treat the elderly patients with vertebral fractures as outpatients we developed an easily wearable plastic body cast that would make patients feel better and stabilize their ADLthereby treating them as outpatients. In the present study, 40 patients (average age,74 years old) with vertebral fractures were treated by this method. No patients needed to be admitted because of good clinical result obtained by the application of this method. Elderly patients often have cardiovascular and pulmonary complications from the beginning of the treatment. The very tight conventional body casts will often worsen their symptoms. Our easily wearable light weight plastic cast can be well fitted to patients who subsequently report no complaints of tightness or discomfort, allowing us to treat all those patients on an outpatient basis.