Does penis radiological shadow indicate the side of hip fracture?
“Sir,

Hip fractures are common injuries in the elderly. Standard radiographic evaluation of the hip includes an anteroposterior (AP) view of the pelvis. For this additional purpose, radiograph of the pelvis is one of the commonest prescribed radiographs in emergency departments. Usually we notice the fractured hip side and the type of fracture, whenever we are looking at an anteroposterior pelvis radiograph. But we do not question if this radiograph represents a true anteroposterior view.

We have noticed that the radiological shadow of the penis almost always turns to the side of the hip fracture in male patients and especially in displaced fractures. Many surgeons have tried to explain this observation.

So we would like to test the hypothesis that the radiological shadow of the penis indicates the side of the hip fracture.

In our retrospective study, 712 male patients with hip fracture were included. In order to test our hypothesis we studied their first pelvis radiograph on admission, before operation. Intertrochanteric hip fracture was noticed in 475 cases and subcapital hip fracture in 237 cases. All the patients had no history of previous ...