Abstract:

BACKGROUND: Clinical practices and experimental researches have found that brain injury with fracture can accelerate fracture healing. Besides, the hypertrophic callus and heterotopic ossification can be found.
OBJECTIVE: To describe the research progresses and exploration direction of the effect of brain trauma on fracture healing.
METHODS: PubMed, Springer Link, CNKI, Elsevier-Sdol databases were searched by computer for papers concerning the effect of brain injury on fracture healing as well as the relationship between brain injury and heterotopic ossification from 1990-01/2011-11. The key words for search were “traumatic brain injury, fracture healing, heterotopic ossification" in English and Chinese. Literatures of irrelevant and repetitive content were excluded, and 32 literatures were included for further study.
RESULTS AND CONCLUSION: The blood-brain barrier damage leads to the increase of permeability when brain injuries. Certain factors which have osteogenic action can enter the systemic circulation through an open blood-brain barrier, and therefore, the expression levels of these factors in serum are significantly increased; meanwhile, the role of osteogenic factors in the fracture can promote callus formation and accelerate fracture healing. These findings suggest that the incidence of heterotopic ossification can be increased due to the coexistence of osteogenic factors and environment for a long time.