How Do You Treat Broken Bones?

Immediately after you or someone close to you is involved in an accident that harms their bones, they should (or you) should help them-apply pressure to the wounded area to stop any bleeding, immobilize the impacted section of the body and apply ice to the region to limit swelling and pain. Unless you are a trained medical professional, you should not attempt to reset or put a bone back into the skin.

Eventually, doctors, radiologists and other medical professionals will treat and diagnose the person with the broken bone as well as give a course of treatment particular to the specific type of the fracture. This treatment may include some of the following items:

• IMMOBILIZATION: The primary goal of most broken bone treatments is to simply let the bones merge back together. However, if they displaced or otherwise unaligned then this will be impossible. Therefore, doctors often realign, or set, the bones then immobilize them so that they do not become unaligned again in the healing process. Due to the pain that this procedure often creates, local anesthetics and other medications are often simultaneously prescribed for the well-being of the patient.
• TRACTION: The more complicated the fracture, the less likely it is that immobilization will be sufficient to ensure proper realignment. In this case, doctors use traction via ropes, weights, and other devices to guarantee that the bones heal properly.
• SURGERY: Extremely advanced bone fractures might leave bone chips and other debris or require metal rods or artificial substitutes. In all of these cases, doctors need to perform surgery to remove the chips and debris or insert a rod or replacement. However, it should be noted that surgery for broken bones is rare and generally not needed.
• REHABILITATION: Many treatments for fractured bones leave the neighboring tissue, muscles, and general area weak and deteriorated. Thus, in conjunction with procedures to fix the bone in question, doctors will also often recommend additional treatments so that fixing the fracture does not adversely affect the surrounding areas.

Since bones break so much, many people ask us how they heal and get back together. It’s not a very complicated process but it does involve a few stages.

1. The bone breaks and your body responds within hours by forming a blot clot and sending phagocytes to kill cells and germs that might infect and damage the area.

2. A soft layer of collagen (also called a callus) forms around the bone where it was broken. The collagen layer is made up of chondroblasts and this process can take a few days to a few weeks.

3. A hard layer of collagen forms around the site where the bone was broken. Osteoblast cells actually encircle the area and form a new bone giving the region new minerals to reinforce its strength. This stage can take a few weeks to a few months.

4. In the last stage, the bone gets remade by osteoclast cells until it’s fully healed and back to its former shape. This stage is much slower than the previous ones and can take as much as a few years.

Your healing process might take more or less time, but this is generally the course that all bones go through after they are broken. To understand exactly what you need to do to get better after breaking a bone, consult your personal physician.