The Monteggia fracture with posterior dislocation of the radial head.

There are two varieties of the fracture-dislocation originally described by Monteggia (1814), according to whether the head of the radius is dislocated anteriorly or posteriorly. The anterior variety, which is the more common, has received a prominent place in all text-books on fractures, chiefly on account of the frequency with which the dislocation is overlooked (Speed and Boyd 1940, \\‘atson-Jones 1943). The posterior variety, however, has received much less attention and there are few references to it in the literature. Most authorities put the incidence of the posterior variety at 10 to 15 per cent but in a series of ten Monteggia fractures treated during the last year at the Bristol Royal Infirmary no fewer than seven had posterior dislocations of the radial head.