July 5, 2020
A 50 year-old woman fell and injured her right shoulder. There is a visible deformity and palpable dislocation. She reports a history of prior shoulder dislocations and confirms that this feels the same. What is the most appropriate next course of action? A) Administer pain
November 6, 2017
A young healthy person takes a fall and presents to the ED with left-sided shoulder pain. Here is the x-ray: Obviously this is a comminuted clavicle fracture. The question is: does this patient need urgent referral to an orthopedic surgeon for repair or is a
August 1, 2017
A person is thumb-wrestling and suffers an unfortunate consequence. After the match, their ring finger is mostly tender and swollen around the MCP joint and stuck in a slightly flexed position. Here is the x-ray: Diagnosis: comminuted proximal phalanx fracture It doesn’t take much to
July 11, 2017
A young healthy person slips on a banana peel and inverts his ankle. X-rays reveal: This is a trimalleolar fracture. Technically a person only has two malleoli (medial and lateral). A trimalleolar fracture involves both of these along with the posterior aspect of the
April 9, 2017
A 4 year old boy presents after falling onto his elbow. Here’s the AP view: It’s seldom this obvious, but the child has a supracondylar humeral fracture. Diagnosis usually requires looking at the lateral film for the presence of a fat pad. Fat pads represent joint
March 30, 2017
A 16 year old boy was playing basketball. He planted, twisted, and fell to the ground in agony. Here’s his x-ray: The finding is straightforward: fractured right femoral shaft. But if you look closely, you can notice that this is a ‘pathologic fracture’ with the
