The Young-Burgess system is useful for predicting transfusion requirements. For the system to predict mortality or nonorthopaedic injuries, fractures must be divided into stable (APC1, LC1) and unstable (APC2, APC3, LC2, LC3, VS, combined mechanism of injury) types. LC1 injuries are very common and not always benign (overall mortality rate, 8.2%).

The diagnosis of compartment syndrome is difficult, and the data reported herein show that significant practice variation is likely, even within a single institution. It is unknown what the "true" rate of compartment syndrome should be, considering that a rate that is too high indicates unnecessary surgery and a rate that is too low means missing a devastating injury. Our data indicate lack of consensus in practice regarding the diagnosis of compartment syndrome, even at a high-volume level I trauma center, and emphasize the possibility of false-positive results of compartment pressure checks in clinical practice.

Diagnostic study, level II.

The presence of pelvic ring fracture seems to represent a clinically significant independent risk factor for mortality, even after accounting for the association with potentially severe additional body system injuries.

Locking plates were shown to provide improved mechanical performance over nonlocking plates in torsional cyclic loading in a osteoporotic cadaveric fracture model. Our results confirm general conclusions of previous work that used a synthetic bone model of osteoporosis, but we found a high rate of catastrophic failure, questioning the validity of the previously published synthetic model of osteoporosis (overdrilling of synthetic bone) for this application.