If you’ve ever stood at the bedside of a 76-year old with a pancake-flat distal radius after a fall from standing height, you’ve probably asked yourself: “Is plating this really worth it?” The Dutch just gave us a very structured, very Dutch answer.
Published in JBJS Open Access, the DART trial is a multicenter randomized noninferiority study that dropped 138 older patients (≥65 years, mean age 76) with substantially displaced intra-articular distal radius fractures into one of two camps: cast management or ORIF — after reduction failed to achieve acceptable alignment. Nineteen hospitals participated, proving once again that the Netherlands can herd more than cats when it comes to RCT logistics.
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