BMJ 1998;317:1117-1118 ( 24 October )

Papers

Importance of bruising associated with paediatric fractures: prospective observational study

Editorial by Eastwood

M O Mathew, specialist registrar in orthopaedics,  N Ramamohan, specialist registrar in orthopaedics,  G C Bennet, consultant orthopaedic surgeon. 

Department of Orthopaedics, Royal Hospital for Sick Children, Glasgow G3 8SJ

Correspondence to: Mr Bennet

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

Few data are published on the bruising seen in association with paediatric fractures. What little can be found is set in the context of non-accidental injury. Differing opinions about the importance of bruising have been expressed by those working on medicolegal cases.1-3 The force necessary to fracture a normal bone is thought to result invariably in external evidence of trauma.1 The absence of such bruising has been taken to imply that minimal force was required to produce the fracture---that is, the fracture occurred because of metabolic bone disease or osteogenesis imperfecta. 2 3

    Subjects, methods, and results

We prospectively assessed 93 acute fractures in 88 normal children (49 boys and 39 girls; age range 12 months to 13 years 11 months) at presentation and before definitive treatment, looking for evidence of bruising around the fracture site. The prevalence of bruising at initial presentation and its incidence during early follow up was evaluated in subsets of fractures grouped according to displacement and extent . . . [Full text of this article]
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Rapid Responses:

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Bruising associated with paediatric fractures
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