There may be a bruise on the outer part of the hip or thigh at the point of impact where you fell, and all movement will be limited and painful.Ī small number of hip fractures may not be as painful at first. Often, the injured leg will appear shorter than the opposite leg and will be twisted or rotated, either internally or externally. The doctor will also check the sensation, movement, and circulation in your lower leg. They will take a history of your injury and check to make sure that you do not have injuries to other parts of your body. Physical therapy will help to restore normal muscle strength, joint motion, and flexibility.Most of the time, a patient with a hip fracture will be taken by ambulance to a hospital emergency room.Īt the hospital, you will be examined by either an emergency room physician or an orthopaedic surgeon. You will lose muscle strength in the injured area.
Some take even longer, especially if the fracture was open or broken into several pieces. Most femoral shaft fractures take 4 to 6 months to completely heal. Our orthopaedic trauma surgeons at Emory utilize these types of surgery to treat femur fractures: This device is a stabilizing frame that holds the bones in the proper position so they can heal. The pins and screws are attached to a bar outside the skin. In this type of operation, metal pins or screws are placed into the bone above and below the fracture site. It keeps your leg straight and often helps to relieve pain.Įxternal fixation. Skeletal traction is a pulley system of weights and counterweights that holds the broken pieces of bone together. This is to keep your broken bones as aligned as possible and to maintain the length of your leg. For the time between initial emergency care and your surgery, your doctor will place your leg either in a long-leg splint or in skeletal traction. Open fractures exposed to the environment urgently need to be cleansed and require immediate surgery to prevent infection.
#Chiefs femur break skin
If the skin around your fracture has not been broken, your doctor will wait until you are stable before doing surgery. It is unusual for femoral shaft fractures to be treated without surgery. Most femoral shaft fractures require surgery to heal. You will not be able to put weight on the injured leg, and it may look deformed - shorter than the other leg and no longer straight. They have a higher risk for complications - especially infections- and take a longer time to heal.Ī femoral shaft fracture usually causes immediate, severe pain. Open fractures often involve much more damage to the surrounding muscles, tendons, and ligaments. Open fracture – If a bone breaks in such a way that bone fragments stick out through the skin or a wound penetrates down to the broken bone, the fracture is called an open or compound fracture.Comminuted fracture – The bone has broken into three or more pieces.A twisting force to the thigh causes this type of fracture.
Spiral fracture – The fracture line encircles the shaft like the stripes on a candy cane.Oblique fracture – The fracture has an angled line across the shaft.Transverse fracture – The break is a straight horizontal line going across the femoral shaft.The most common types of femoral shaft fractures include: Whether the skin and muscle above the bone is torn by the injury.The pattern of the fracture (for example, the bone can break in different directions, such as cross-wise, length-wise, or in the middle).The location of the fracture (the femoral shaft is divided into thirds: distal, middle, proximal).Femur fractures are classified depending on: The pieces of bone may line up correctly or be out of alignment (displaced), and the fracture may be closed (skin intact) or open (the bone has punctured the skin). Car crashes, for example, are the number one cause of femur fractures.įemur fractures vary greatly, depending on the force that causes the break. Because the femur is so strong, it usually takes a lot of force to break it. Your thigh bone (femur) is the longest and strongest bone in your body.
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