Images of a Classical osteoporotic Iliac Compound wing Fracture in an Elderly Female?
Massimo Bolognesi*
Head of Internal General Medicine,AUSL della Romagna,Cesena, Italy
*Address for Correspondence: Massimo Bolognesi, Head of Internal General Medicine,AUSL della Romagna,Cesena, Italy, Email: massimo.bolognesi@medici.progetto-sole.it
Submitted: 12 December 2019; Approved: 04 February 2019; Published: 06 February 2019
Citation this article: Bolognesi M. Images of a Classical osteoporotic Iliac Compound wing Fracture in an Elderly Female. Int J Case Rep Short Rev. 2019;5(2): 006-007.
Copyright: © 2019 Bolognesi M. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited
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Introduction
Emergency departments must take care of people presenting physical trauma in a short time, especially where elderly patients are concerned. One of the main causes of diagnostic errors in the emergency department is the failure to correctly interpret radiographs, and the majority of diagnoses missed on X-ray imaging are fractures. Diagnostic errors potentially have important consequences for patients, clinicians and radiologists. With this brief case report the author describes a typical situation which may happen in an emergency department of a small town with the aim of highlighting the causes of the spectrum of diagnostic errors in radiography in the emergency setting.
Case Report
An elderly 75-year-old female patient, small and thin, diabetic and a smoker, was admitted to the Emergency Department because of an accidental fall to the ground. She presented with limping gait with pain in her left hip. X-rays of the pelvis were performed to rule out a fracture, which results were missed by the radiologist (Figure1). Consequently CT of the pelvis was requested by her GP’s. CT scan showing a clear compound fracture of the left iliac wing extending to the acetabular column (Figure 2-3), which was suspected after a careful clinical examination. In view of the general situation, the orthopedic surgeon decided to undertake conservative treatment and the patient was discharged without surgery.
Conclusion
The conclusion is that most of the mistakes in the emergency department have the potential to compromise patient safety. They are caused by human error, according to a recent study published online September 18, 2009 in BMC Emergency.
- Smits M, Groenewegen PP, Timmermans DR, van der Wal G, Wagner C. The nature and causes of unintended events reported at ten emergency depatmentes. BMC Emerg Med. 2009; 9. https://goo.gl/i51kth
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