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Completed Not applicable Interventional

A Clinical Trial for the Surgical Treatment of Elderly Distal Radius Fractures

ClinicalTrials.gov ID: NCT01589692

Public ClinicalTrials.gov record NCT01589692. Field values are reproduced from the official study page; the official ClinicalTrials.gov record remains the source of truth for eligibility, enrollment, and contact information.

ClinicalTrials.gov public records Last synced Sep 5, 2026, 9:56 PM EDT

Data is sourced from official ClinicalTrials.gov public API records. Always review the official ClinicalTrials.gov record for the latest information.

Official title

A Clinical Trial for the Surgical Treatment of Elderly Distal Radius Fractures. The Wrist and Radius Injury Surgical Trial (WRIST)

Brief summary

Reproduced verbatim from the official ClinicalTrials.gov record. Not medical advice.

In the United States, over 300,000 individuals over age 65 suffer from distal radius fractures (DRFs) each year. Despite the frequency of this injury and over 200 years of experience treating DRFs, management of elderly DRFs is still controversial. Close reduction and casting is a nonsurgical technique that is frequently used, but osteoporotic fractures, common in the elderly, often collapse and displace. The three currently applied surgical techniques are close reduction and percutaneous pinning, external fixation with or without percutaneous pinning, and internal fixation with volar locking plating. Preliminary evidence indicates that locking plate fixation can permit elderly patients to move their hands and wrists much sooner in order to return to self-care activities more quickly. Although these outcomes are promising, there is no randomized controlled clinical trial to demonstrate that the more invasive, and perhaps more costly, plating technique is superior to the other simpler approaches. The specific aim of this 24-center randomized controlled trial is to compare outcomes of these three surgical techniques in treating unstable DRFs in the elderly. The secondary aim is to follow a cohort of elderly patients who choose not to have surgery to evaluate outcomes following treatment by close reduction and casting alone. This clinical trial is the most ambitious study in hand surgery by assembling most of the leading centers in North America to collect evidence-based data to guide future treatment of this prevalent injury in the growing elderly population.

Study identification

NCT ID
NCT01589692
Recruitment status
Completed
Study type
Interventional
Phase
Not applicable
Lead sponsor
University of Michigan
Other
Enrollment
304 participants

Conditions and interventions

Eligibility (public fields only)

Age range
60 Years and older
Sex
All
Healthy volunteers
Healthy volunteers not accepted

This page does not interpret eligibility. Detailed inclusion and exclusion criteria are on the official ClinicalTrials.gov record.

Study timeline

Start date
Apr 9, 2012
Primary completion
Feb 2, 2018
Completion
Jan 7, 2019
Last update posted
Feb 10, 2019

2012 – 2019

United States locations

U.S. sites
20
U.S. states
12
U.S. cities
18
Facility City State ZIP Site status
University of Connecticut Farmington Connecticut 06030
Norton Healthcare Louisville Kentucky 40241
Johns Hopkins University Baltimore Maryland 21218
Brigham and Women's Hospital Boston Massachusetts 02115
Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center Boston Massachusetts 02215
Massachusetts General Hospital Boston Massachusetts 20114
University of Michigan Ann Arbor Michigan 48109
Mayo Clinic Rochester Minnesota 55905
HealthPartners Institute for Education and Research Saint Paul Minnesota 55101
North Shore - Long Island Jewish Health System Great Neck New York 11021
University of Rochester Rochester New York 14642
OrthoCarolina Charlotte North Carolina 28207
Duke University Durham North Carolina 27710
Wake Forest University Winston-Salem North Carolina 27157
Kettering Health Network Centerville Ohio 45459
The MetroHealth System Cleveland Ohio 44109
University of Oklahoma Oklahoma City Oklahoma 73126
University of Pennsylvania Philadelphia Pennsylvania 19104
University of Pittsburgh Pittsburgh Pennsylvania 15213
University of Washington Seattle Washington 98104

Site contact phone numbers, emails, and investigator names are intentionally not displayed here. Open the official ClinicalTrials.gov record for site contact information.

Non-U.S. locations

This page focuses on the U.S. directory. The official record also lists 4 non-U.S. sites.

About this trial record page

What this page shows
Public field values for ClinicalTrials.gov record NCT01589692, including study identification, conditions, interventions, eligibility (age, sex, healthy volunteer), timeline, and U.S. site list.
What this page does not do
No medical advice, eligibility judgments, treatment recommendations, study quality scoring, or AI-generated medical summaries. No site contact phone numbers, emails, or investigator names.
Where the data comes from
Sourced from the official ClinicalTrials.gov public API. The official record is the source of truth.
Last refresh
Last update posted Feb 10, 2019 · Synced Sep 5, 2026

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Open the official record

The complete protocol, eligibility criteria, and contact information for NCT01589692 live on ClinicalTrials.gov.

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