Thirteen cases of comminuted distal radius fractures were treated with external skeletal fixation from January 1985 to June 1989. Those cases were reviewed with special respect to the loss of reduction during immobilization.

All fractures were healed with no remarkable complications and with minimal loss of redunction(average 1.1 mm loss in radial length).

We think that the results suggest that external skeletal fixation is a simple and reliable method to prevent the recollapse of the reduced comminuted distal radius fractures.