Traumatic elbow injuries: what the orthopedic surgeon wants to know

Traumatic elbow injuries are commonly encountered in the emergency department setting, but their complexity and clinical significance often go unrecognized at the initial evaluation. Initial imaging in patients with elbow trauma should not only help identify major injuries that require immediate intervention but also allow detection of other, often more subtle injuries that may lead to instability or poor functional outcomes if appropriate treatment is delayed. Awareness and detection of these injuries may be improved by a better-developed and more intuitive understanding of the mechanisms that underlie the most common injury patterns. Ideally, such understanding should prompt appropriate early use of advanced imaging techniques. Traumatic elbow injuries should be described in the radiology report within the context of their clinical significance and their implications for management, information that is often best captured by the injury grading and classification systems used by the orthopedic surgery community. This article reviews the relevant anatomy and functional stability of the elbow and discusses common traumatic elbow injury patterns, including elbow dislocations as well as fractures of the distal humerus, radial head and neck, coronoid process, and olecranon. Less commonly encountered injury constellations that are clinically significant are also described. Injury patterns are explained in the context of the responsible force mechanism by using three-dimensional modeling and animation, with emphasis on the functional impact of associated secondary bone and soft-tissue injuries. The utility of cross-sectional imaging modalities such as computed tomography and magnetic resonance imaging in the acute care setting is discussed, and specific imaging guidelines are provided. Supplemental material available at http://radiographics.rsna.org/lookup/suppl/doi:10.1148/rg.333125176/-/DC1.