Comments on the Article "The Effect of Positive Medial Cortical Support in Reduction of Pertrochanteric Fractures with Posteromedial Wall Defect Using a Dynamic Hip Screw": In Reply.

Reply:

Thank you for your interest in our paper. In the study,1) we attempted to demonstrate the effect of positive medial cortical support on reduction of peritrochanteric fractures with posteromedial wall defects by using a dynamic hip screw. The cases were divided into three groups according to the cortical support. There were 28 positive cases, 42 neutral cases, and 30 negative cases.

You have pointed out that there are issues on our analysis of the effect of the use of trochanter stabilizing plate or wire. We admit that there could have been some errors in the analysis of the effect of an additional fixator. As we mentioned in the limitation, selection bias due to follow-up loss and retrospective design of the study could be the causes of the error.

However, there might be some confusion among the readers since the use of additional fixators could not be clearly distinguished according to the groups. So, we provide a table that depicts the use of additional fixators by each group (Table 1). We admit that it was difficult to evaluate the effectiveness of additional fixators, as you have mentioned, with those groups of patients. A larger pool of data will be needed to analyze the effect of additional fixation, and this was also the limitation of our paper. Thank you.

Table 1

Use of Additional Fixators According to Groups

Variable	DHS only	DHS + wire	DHS + TSP	DHS + wire + TSP	Total (N)
Group 1 (positive)	10	0	14	4	28
Group 2 (neutral)	10	2	18	12	42
Group 3 (negative)	2	2	18	8	30

DHS: dynamic hip screw, TSP: trochanter stabilizing plate.