Skeletal Trauma > Elbow > Plastic Bowing Fracture


Plastic Bowing Fracture

Plastic Bowing Fracture

  • Occurs in children.
  • Also called greenstick fracture because the fracture resembles a young green twig being bent.
  • There are three kinds of greenstick fractures:

    1. Transverse fracture - fracture halfway across the bone.
    2. Torus/buckling fracture - cortex is buckled and overlapped, caused by impaction.
    3. Bowing fracture - bent bone with no distinct cortex disruption.

  • The bowing fracture is most common in the forearm, but they can also occur in the fibula.
Note both the radial fracture and the bowed ulna. Casted. The ulna is bowed here.