Clavicular fractures are occasionally responsible for lesions of the brachial plexus. The symptoms are usually delayed and due to compression by hypertrophic callus, nonunion or a subclavian pseudoaneurysm.

We describe a patient in whom a displaced bone fragment was pressing on the retroclavicular part of the brachial plexus, leading to early symptoms of a lesion of the posterior cord. Internal fixation of the clavicle and external neurolysis of the brachial plexus gave an almost full recovery.

1. Eleven patients with juvenile rheumatoid arthritis, most of them young adults at a terminal stage, were found to have structural scoliosis with curves measuring between 20 and 80 degrees.

2. The common feature was severe and protracted rheumatoid disease.

3. The characteristics of the spinal curves are analysed; the longer curves may have been caused by muscle imbalance and the shorter curves possibly by asymmetrical involvement of the inter-apophyseal joints.

4. It is suggested that juvenile rheumatoid arthritis is an unusual etiological factor of scoliosis.