Structural Analysis of Human Rib Fracture and Implications for Forensic Interpretation*

Abstract

Patterns of rib fractures are of significant clinical and forensic interest. Linking patterns of rib fracture with specific physical events provides a foundation for understanding the nature of traumatic events that are associated with rib fracture in forensic contexts. In this study, isolated human ribs (n = 8) were end-loaded to failure to investigate: (i) local deformations (bone strain) prior to and during structural failure, (ii) location of ultimate failure, and (iii) fracture mode. Structural properties of ribs were used to calculate theoretical stresses to determine whether such calculations could be used to predict site of fracture. Ribs fractured on the sternal side of midshaft in all experiments, but mode of failure varied with transverse, buckle, spiral, and "butterfly" fractures observed. Comparison of calculated stress with observed strain values suggest that experimental, rather than theoretical, approaches will be most productive in furthering understanding rib fracture in forensic contexts.

Missed rib fractures on evaluation of initial chest CT for trauma patients: pattern analysis and diagnostic value of coronal multiplanar reconstruction images with multidetector row CT

“…incomplete and buckle fractures) in adults aged 21-76 years. Daegling et al [25] performed an experiment in vitro to examine whether rib fracture patterns are consistent under controlled loading conditions despite idiosyncratic variation in rib morphology. They found that the patterns of rib fractures such as transverse, spiral, butterfly and buckle shapes are remarkably variable and unpredictable, and buckling was expected in cases where a load is imposed on a very thin-walled structure.…”

Compressive rib fracture: Peri-mortem and post-mortem trauma patterns in a pig model

“…Archaelogical data published by Roberts and Cox [19] showed that rib fractures were more commonly recorded than any other type of fracture in Britain. Yet the biomechanics of rib fractures, especially with respect to peri-and postmortem breakage, remains poorly understood [7,20]. More recently, literature has emerged that calls for researchers to take advantage of synergy at the interface between biology and materials science [21].…”

“…(A) Transverse fracture perpendicular to the long axis of the bone, (B) spiral fracture along a sigmoid course, (C) butterfly fracture with an initial transverse segment on the tensional surface which bifurcates into two oblique fracture lines toward the compressive side, (D) half butterfly fracture, (E) buckle fracture typified by bony bulging on the compressive side (modified from[20]). …”

Biomechanical and Remodeling Factors in the Interpretation of Fractures in Juveniles

“…An understanding of biomechanical factors operating on skeletal anatomical structure facilitates interpretation of bone fractures [40,41,[55][56][57][58][59], especially when addressing juvenile fractures [31,50,[60][61][62][63]. As noted above, the nature of the stress load can reflect a variety of different types of applied forces.…”