Pediatric Physeal Injuries Overview

Pediatric fractures include the growth plate 15 to 18% of the time. Foucher first described injuries to the growth plate back in 1863, with the first classification system described by Poland in 1898. The most popular, descriptive anatomical classification system used today, the Saltar-Harris classification, was described by Dr. Salter and Dr. Harris in 1963. They were the first to recognize that the injury occurred through the zone of provisional calcification of the physis; this is a weaker zone in the physis due to it being a transition between the calcified and non-calcified parts of the growth plate.