Abstract
This article reviews acute and chronic lower extremity injuries in children, focusing
mainly on those traumas typical of the pediatric population. The child is not just
a small version of an adult, so physicians need a very detailed knowledge of the anatomy
and physiologic changes occurring during growth to understand and evaluate the mechanism
of trauma, and choose the most adequate management. In adolescents the most common
lesion encountered affects the physes, which are still open. They predispose to injury
as the weakest point in the kinetic chain, so those mechanisms responsible for ligamentous
traumas in adults can cause physeal injuries in a skeletally immature patient. In
association with them, apophyseal lesions are also very common, leading to avulsion
injuries at the site of tendon origin or insertion, also called locus minoris resistentiae. Understanding these types of injuries is essential, specifically for the radiologist,
because a missed diagnosis can lead to later complications such as growth arrest and
osteoarthritis.
Keywords
children - lower limbs - radiographs - MRI - fractures
