THE STADER REDUCTION SPLINT FOR TREATING FRACTURES OF THE SHAFTS OF THE LONG BONES

Otto Stader (Fig. 1) was born in Germany and brought to the United Sta tes by his parents when he was six years old. He was educated and trai ned to be a veterinarian. During World War I, he served in the Veterin ary Corps of the U.S. Army. After his return to civilian life, he had a large animal practice until 1930 when he decided to specialize in th e treatment of small animals. He established a small animal hospital i n Ardmore, Pennsylvania. It was here that he developed his method of t reating long bone fractures by means of an external skeletal fixation device which became known as the Stader splint. As a result of this te chnique, Stader became well known and received numerous awards from th e national and international veterinarian community. Although the firs t notice of this method appeared in the North American Veterinarian,1, 3 the technique was described in the surgical literature by two surgeo ns from Bellevue Hospital, New York, who had seen the application of t he splint to a police dog with a fractured femur, and who had a larger model of the external skeletal fixation device manufactured for use i n humans. It is this paper by Kenneth M. Lewis and Lester Breidenbach with Otto Stader as a coauthor that has been selected as the classic a rticle. As a substitute for plaster casts in personnel at sea, the Sta der splint was used by the United States Navy during World War II and one of the best descriptions of the technique is found in a manual pub lished by two Navy medical officers.2 The Stader splint is the prototy pe of many subsequent external skeletal fixation systems, although Sta der's contribution to their development is often ignored.