Abstract
The floating elbow is an uncommon injury occurring both in children and in adults. Two reports of rare variants of floating elbow injury have been published, but to the best of our knowledge, no recurrence of this injury has been described. We present a complex pattern of floating injury, occurring in the same limb 3 years after a floating elbow lesion, which included supracondylar fracture of the humerus and associated ipsilateral midshaft fracture of forearm bones. Satisfactory outcomes were finally obtained. This clinical case illustrates the importance of carefully assessing floating elbow injuries when they occur to optimize the surgical strategies and the adequate timing of the treatment. A comprehensive literature review of the floating elbow injuries is here reported.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1007/s11751-011-0102-7) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.
Highlights
The floating elbow, defined as a simultaneous ipsilateral fracture of the humerus and forearm, is an uncommon injury occurring both in children [1, 2] and in adults [3,4,5,6]
We present a complex pattern of floating injury, occurring in the same limb 3 years after a floating elbow lesion, which included supracondylar fracture of the humerus and associated ipsilateral midshaft fracture of forearm bones
We present a complex pattern of injury, occurring in the same limb 3 years after the healing of a floating elbow lesion, which included supracondylar fracture of the humerus and associated ipsilateral midshaft fracture of forearm bones
Summary
The floating elbow, defined as a simultaneous ipsilateral fracture of the humerus and forearm, is an uncommon injury occurring both in children [1, 2] and in adults [3,4,5,6]. We present a complex pattern of floating injury, occurring in the same limb 3 years after a floating elbow lesion, which included supracondylar fracture of the humerus and associated ipsilateral midshaft fracture of forearm bones. Keywords Floating elbow injury Á Recurrence of fractures Á Open reduction and internal fixation Á Difficult hardware removal
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