Fracture translation

Last revised by Daniel J Bell on 30 Oct 2018

Fracture translation (also called translocation) describes the movement of fractured bones away from each other. In some cases, people will just use the term displacement to describe translation. However, displacement should really be used as a broad term that refers to angulation, translation and rotation.

Translation can be described using the width of the bone as context, e.g. translation of 25% of the width of the bone. If translation exceeds the width of the bone, it can be described as being 'off-ended'.

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