Flouting knee and its complications

The ipsilateral femur and tibia fracture is an uncommon injury that is usually associated with a high energy trauma. Such association is named floating knee. In this injury, the complications are usually frequent, such as infection, fat embolism, nonunion, joint stiffness and residual pain as the most common. We present a case report of a patient that after a motorcycle accident developed a floating knee in the left lower extremity. He was attended initially in another trauma hospital, where they use temporal external fixators. Four months after the initial surgery, the fixators were withdrawn, and they did the definitive osteosynthesis with intramedullary nails in femur and tibia. After five months the nails were retired due to nonunion in both fractures. At this moment, the patient was seen and treated by a different trauma surgeon and actual doctor in the case, who treated the fractures with a combination of debridement, application of autologous bone graft and osteosynthesis with Ender nails and an anatomic plate in femur, and an anatomical buttress plate in the tibia. Once the fractures were consolidated, the patient developed knee arthritis which was treated with a bi-unicondylar arthroplasty of the left knee. After nine years, the patient has functional range of motion, no pain and can do physical activity.