'AO' or eponyms: The classification of wrist fractures

Abraham Colles had the good fortune to describe the most common fracture about the wrist but, because its description was published in a provincial journal, it received little attention and was almost never referred to in his lifetime. The same can be said of Claude Pouteau who described the same fracture in another lesser-known medical journal. Robert Smith described the fracture that bears his name in 1847 although it had already been described by Jean-Gaspar-Blaise Goyrand some years before. Galeazzi's fracture had been described nearly 90 years earlier by Sir Astley Cooper and is also known as Dupuytren's and Piedmont fracture. To add to the conflicting nomenclature it is sometimes not clear whether a Smith's II fracture is a Barton's fracture or a reversed Barton's fracture. In the presence of all of this confusion it is not surprising that a Swiss group, Arbeitsgemeinschaft fur Osteosynthesefragen, has classified wrist fractures into groups of As, Bs and Cs.