Pelvic fractures are commonly referred. Modern locking plating techniques have greatly improved the treatment of many of these injuries.
A stray Staffordshire Bull Terrier bitch was hit by a car and sustained a complex pelvic fracture including the sacrum, which is the bone at the bottom of the spinal column that links the back to the pelvis. The fractures were stabilised with two locking plates. The new owner did an excellent job of post-operative nursing and physiotherapy and the dog made a full recovery. The use of a locking plate between the iliac wings to stabilise the sacral fracture was a novel technique that was designed by our surgeons and this technique was then published in the orthopaedic literature. It has since been successfully repeated on a number of other cases.
3rd October 2012
