Here are the x-rays from a four year old child who has a fracture of the lateral epicondyle. The fracture occurred when the child fell onto her out-stretched hand (a mechanism of injury that we call a FOOSH) while running on a playground. Here are the films taken in the emergency department….
The child was evaluated in the emergency department and taken to the operating room on the same day for closed reduction and percutaneous pin fixation of her lateral epicondyle fracture. Here are the intra-operative C-arm pictures of the fracture after percutaneous pinning….
In this instance, anatomic reduction was achieved, which means that the normal anatomy of the distal humerus was restored and the bone were lined up again before the pins were inserted. 3 weeks later the pins were removed, but this child had a lot of difficult regaining full range of motion of the elbow. Nearly a year later, she still had less than full flexion of the elbow, which is sometimes encountered in pediatric elbow fracture.
