Pelvic and acetabular fractures in childhood

In pediatric pelvic fractures and acetabular fractures, the treating physician is confronted with a unique pattern of injuries. Throughout the literature, pediatric pelvic fractures are rare, but acetabular fractures are even rarer. The lack of experience with this type of fracture, due to their infrequency, leads to unavailability of standardized protocols for specific diagnosis and therapy. Anatomical differences and various stages of skeletal maturation between children and adults lead to different causes, patterns, and associated injuries. In this article, we review the epidemiology and pathophysiology of this entity of fractures and provide current algorithms for diagnosis and therapy. Both operative and nonoperative treatments have been advocated in the literature, and in this article we define indications for both approaches and review the current literature.