Intramedullary rod
metal rod in the marrow cavity of a bone, usually used to treat fractures of long bones
An intramedullary rod, also known as an intramedullary nail (IM nail) or inter-locking nail or Küntscher nail (without proximal or distal fixation), is a metal rod forced into the medullary cavity of a bone. IM nails have long been used to treat fractures of long bones of the body. Gerhard Küntscher is credited with the first use of this device in 1939, during World War II, for soldiers with fractures of the femur. Prior to that, treatment of such fractures was limited to traction or plaster, both of which required long periods of inactivity. IM nails resulted in earlier return to activity for the soldiers, sometimes even within a span of a few weeks, since the nails share the load with the bone rather than entirely support it.
The oldest intramedullary nail was found in the left knee of a mummy named Usermontu, the remains of an Egyptian man from more than 3,500 years ago. Researchers believe the pin was inserted after the man's death but before his burial.
Design
The earliest IM nails were triangular or V-shaped in cross-section. Later they were modified to their present and more rotationally stable clover-leaf shape. Several modifications and shapes were introduced subsequently for various bones such as V-nails for tibia, radius and ulna nails, Rusch nails etc.
“Intramedullary rod” enters the record as metal rod in the marrow cavity of a bone, usually used to treat fractures of long bones. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Intramedullary, metal and marrow can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 16, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q655955. The Library of Congress control number is sh85067619. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1939.
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This entry incorporates text from “Intramedullary rod” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.