ISTURBANCES of neurological function are an uncommon complication of pelvic fractures and reports in English have been rare. Neurological data accompanying these few published cases is generally fragmentary and hardly adequate for drawing more than tentative conclusions regarding the mechanism and site of the peripheral nerve injury. Lam 7 surveyed the literature and found mention of nerve injury in 0.75 per cent of 1889 pelvic fractures, but encountered 9 nerve injuries in his series of 100 cases. Bonnin 3 described associated nerve injuries in 11 per cent of his 44 patients. More recently, Patterson and Morton TM reported neurological complications in 1.~ per cent of 809 pelvic fractures. Reasons for this more than tenfold disparity between rates of neurological complications are not obvious. No pattern of pelvic ring fracture seems to predominate in instances where nerve damage has occurred. However, nerve deficits appear to be more common with fractures of the sacrum than with pelvic fractures not involving that structure. Further comment will be made on this phenomenon later in the article. Patterson and Morton 1~ reported sacroiliac joint separation in over half of their patients with neural damage; sacroiliac subluxation, however, occurs in only 6 per cent of unselected pelvic injuries. 9 We have recently encountered 3 cases of nerve injury complicating pelvic fractures. All have undergone careful neurological evaluation, myelography, and surgical exploration. The data from these cases have increased our understanding of the nature and site of the neural damage. Case Reports Case 1. A ~l-year-old white man was transferred to the Indiana University Medical Center 6 hours following an automobile accident. Immediately following the injury, he had been taken to

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