CASE REPORT
Occult Acetabular Fracture in Elderly Patients
Enrique Guerado*, Juan Ramón Cano, Encarnación Cruz
Article Information
Identifiers and Pagination:
Year: 2012Volume: 6
First Page: 582
Last Page: 586
Publisher ID: TOORTHJ-6-582
DOI: 10.2174/1874325001206010582
Article History:
Received Date: 13/6/2012Revision Received Date: 24/8/2012
Acceptance Date: 28/8/2012
Electronic publication date: 7/12/2012
Collection year: 2012

open-access license: This is an open access article licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/) which permits unrestricted, non-commercial use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the work is properly cited.
Abstract
Acetabular fractures in the elderly are increasingly common; however, an antecedent of trauma may not be known, and the diagnosis easily missed. Early identification and prompt management are needed in order to minimise morbidity rates, but little has been published on occult acetabular fracture.
In this paper we present three cases of occult acetabular fracture in patients older than 75 years. All three are females and had previously been operated on the ipsilateral hip with an implant (two proximal femur fractures treated with a proximal intramedullary femoral nail, and one case of total joint replacement); these acetabular fractures could be related to the existence of a stress shielding mechanism.
We believe that whenever an elderly patient feels groin pain, and anteroposterior pelvis X-rays are normal, oblique Judet projections (obturator and iliac) should be obtained. In any case, displacement will make any fracture evident within a few weeks.