With deepening understanding of surgical treatment of calcaneal fractures, clinical appli-cations of external fixators have drawn more attention.At present, however, there has been no systematic review of such applications for intra-articular calcaneal fracture.This review collected all the recent reports available on such applications to analyze the use and clinical indications of different external fixators.More-over, on the basis of our own clinical experience, we further proposed a novel treatment protocol for intraar-ticular calcaneal fractures which integrates internal and external fixation and minimally invasive techniques.

Calcaneus; Fractures, bone; External fixators; Intra-articular