What Might a Bone Injury Do to You?
Bone injuries cause both temporary and permanent disabilities and death in some cases. For example, when a fractured rib pierces your heart or a lung or when you end up cracking your skull. Getting some air is fine for you, not for your brain. You’ll need someone who is more than a General Orthopedic Physician to patch you up and help you recover; and live.
Bone injuries often turn out as fatal, and age is a factor here. While healthy adults and teens are easier to treat, the same can’t always be claimed about minors and infants. Minors, teens, and infants heal faster, but detecting a broken or fractured bone is difficult in minors and infants. Simply because they can’t explain well where the malady is, and with aged people, healing is often a big problem. More so when there’s an underlying condition like Osteoporosis or Cancer is present.
However, disorders like Osteogenesis Imperfecta lift the bar from age or gender. OI is a genetic/ hereditary disease that turns bones brittle and weak by default, and they break easily. Often, there remains no obvious reason, or breakage occurs against minimal blows. Mild O.I. brings a few fractures, while severe O.I. might bring multiple, multiple fractures and associated medical complications. Other such disorders include Osteopenia, Paget’s disease, Osteonecrosis, Fibrous dysplasia, and Osteomalacia, and concerns either abnormal bone growth or abnormal weakening of the bones.
Bone Injury Types: A Descriptive Explanation
Some bone fracture types are extremely difficult to manage, even if they occur in the limbs or in the extremities. However, fractures occurring from traumas to the head and chest, ribs, spine, or pelvis can result in extreme complications. It’s the underlying organs that stay responsible, the organs that the bone structures protect. Often they get squashed, pinched, or punctured – even torn – in case of a fracture occurring from a severe impact.
These kinds of fractures are not something a General Orthopedic Physician can handle. Such conditions are beyond the grasp of first-aid principles, as they often become life-threatening and require emergency assistance. Such fractures are defined briefly underneath.
· Closed/simple fractures – Broken bone does not pierce the skin.
· Open/compound fractures – Broken bone breaks the skin, forming a wound that leads to the site of fracture. Risks of infection increase, and profuse external bleeding occurs.
· Greenstick fracture – Any small and slender crack is given this name. Children are more prone to this kind of a fracture, since children’s bones are more flexible compared to an adult’s.
· Hairline crack/fracture – Caused in bones exposed to higher stress than they are equipped to handle. Usually occurs in the feet and lower legs.
· Complicated fracture – This kind of fracture injures the surrounding organs, nerves, veins, and arteries and also damages the periosteum, the dense, fibrous lining of the bone.
· Comminuted fracture – This shatters the affected bone or bones into small pieces. Very difficult to heal and takes a lot of time.
· Avulsion fracture – Occurs when a powerful muscle contraction wrenches a tendon free from the bone by pulling out a piece (or pieces) of bone. The knee and the shoulder joints are more prone to avulsion fractures.
· Compression fracture – 2 bones when forced head-on against each other, a compression fracture is formed. The spine is more susceptible to such fractures, and with bone-related disorders, the chances increase tenfold. Other causes can be anything between car accidents and a fall from a height.
How a General Orthopedic Physician might diagnose a bone injury?
Unless a fracture is visible to the naked eye, it’s very difficult to find out where it has occurred. To understand the full extent of a fracture, diagnostic testing is the only comprehensive medical evaluation a doctor will perform.
The most common one is X-ray, which produces images of fragmented bones and adjoining/surrounding tissues/organs on a film. Among more advanced methods, there are:
· CAT Scan: Computed tomography scan or CT scan, using X-rays and computer technology combo. It produces horizontal or axial slices (images) of the body, showing graphical details of bones, fat, muscles, and organs.
· MRI: Magnetic resonance imaging diagnoses with a combination of large magnets and radio frequencies transformed into images by a computer.
From here, things are passed on to the hands of the specialists, and Orthopedic Specialists in Florida are renowned for their expertise in treating bone-related injuries the best!
The healing process shall extend to anything between 6 and 8 weeks, but even a General Orthopedic Physician shall advise you not to go too hard on the temporary bone/callus. It will take more time to grow as strong as a real bone and might break easily under heavy load or stress.
Better let the Orthopedic Specialists in Florida tell you about how long you should wait before you spring back to your old activities.
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