The work presents the analysis of the group of 172 patients with the fracture of the proximal femur treated by the technique of Ender nailing between June 1985 and December 1988. The group comprised 45 male (26 per cent) and 127 female (74 per cent) patients. Their average age was 76 years (ranging from 20 to 97 years of age) out of which 75 per cent of patients were older than 70 years and 40 per cent older than 80 years. Indication of Ender nailing in patients under 60 years of age we consider exceptional. In our group we operated on in total 14 patients under 60 years of age (ranging from 20 to 57 years of age) and namely in case of the comminuted type of fracture increased risk of infection or serious total condition. The whole group was operated on by 21 variously experienced surgeons. 147 operations were performed in the general anesthesia and 25 in the epidural one. The fractures of the proximal femur were divided into basicervical--10 (6 per cent), stable pertrochanteric 96 (56 per cent), unstable pertrochanteric--38 (22 per cent), per-subtrochanteric--19 (11 per cent) and subtrochanteric--9 (5 per cent). For the objective evaluation we compared our classification of the fracture of the trochanteric part with these of Evens, Kyle and Jensen. For stable fractures we considered the types I and II according to Kyle, for unstable the type III of Kyle classification. Per-subtrochanteric fractures (Kyle IV) we singled out for their seriousness as a separate group of unstable pertrochanteric fractures. Almost the same spectrum of fractures was in the group of 108 patients in which we evaluated longterm results. The minimum observence period was 3 months the mean period 6.3 months. Almost all patients from this group were followed up until complete healing. The mean duration of operation was 52 minutes, the mean duration of anesthesia was 81 minutes and the duration of X-ray exposure was 2.6 minutes. These data were calculated also for individual types of fractures. In this case the time intervals differed according to the seriousness of the fracture. The comparison of our time data with other authors reliably evaluating the results of Ender nailing has proved that it is necessary to free this intervention from the myth of a quick and easy operation. The average number of nails inserted in one patient was 3.6.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 400 WORDS)