Prophylactic internal fixation of the femur in metastatic breast cancer

Abstract

Three hundred and thirty-eight patients with breast cancer have been reviewed. About half of the patients with skeletal metastases developed femoral involvement, usually bilateral. Certain impending femoral fractures can be presaged, and in these patients prophylactic internal fixation has reduced the incidence of pathologic fractures in femora so affected by metastatic disease from 32% to 9%.