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- This condition can refer to a break in a bone (broken bone), but it also refers to a break in a cartilage segment.
- 5 physical signs of a
fracture:
- Localized pain, point tenderness (pain over the exact point of the fracture)
- Swelling
- Bleeding into the skin, over the fracture site
- Crepitus (a crackling sound, heard when pieces move)
- Loss of function
- An X-ray will usually show a fracture, but if the fracture is very small or the fracture line is very thin, the X-ray may appear normal. Also, if there is no displacement of the fracture pieces and the pieces are perfectly aligned, the X-ray may be normal. To visualize the previously-invisible fracture (called an occult fracture), a repeat X-ray days to weeks later may now show a fracture line because of the loss of bone along the fracture line during the healing phase of a bone fracture.
- An occult fracture is suspected because of the physical signs of a fracture.
- In an impacted fracture, the pieces
are jammed together by the force of the injury, and we may not see a fracture line because the bony pieces are pushed into each other. This obscures the line we would see if the pieces were pulled apart, as in the usual fracture.
- Cartilage fractures are very hard to see if the fracture only involves cartilage and no adjacent bone is involved.
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- Pain, a deformity at the fracture site, or loss of function of that body part.
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- Fractures are usually due to
injury.
- Fractures that occur spontaneously, caused by a disease, are called pathologic fractures. They might occur from loss of mineral from the bone, loss of supporting substance in the bone, or crowding-out of the normal bone tissue by other tissue that doesn't belong there, such as a small bone cyst.
- Pathologic fractures often occur in a part of the bone that is not a stress point, that hardly ever gets fractured. In children, most pathologic fractures are caused by benign diseases.
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- Diagnosis is usually made by seeing a clear line that does not belong there, on an X-ray of the particular site. The fracture line will likely be at the exact spot where the person has pain.
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- Athletes
- Manual laborers
- Disease of bone, such as a small benign bone cyst, is a cause of pathologic fractures in children.
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- Fractures usually are splinted or casted to place the injured part at-rest, avoiding movement of the fracture pieces while they are healing. If the fracture caused a deformity and the fracture pieces are out of alignment, a cast is a way of holding the pieces in-place after the physician lines up the pieces correctly.
- In some minor fractures where a deformity does not have to be corrected, such as a minor fracture of a toe, some simple method might be used to hold the pieces in-place. "Buddy-taping," one such method, tapes the fractured toe to an adjacent toe in a special way. This really does not prevent movement of the pieces at the fracture site, but it limits the movement.
- Surgery is necessary in some cases, to correct a fracture or clean out material that may cause infection.
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- Non-healing or delayed healing
- Deformity
- Infection
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- Localized pain, especially continued pain after an Injury, may mean a fracture.
- Swelling, bleeding, a crackling sound when the injured part is moved, and loss of function may all mean a fracture.
- It is necessary for you to see a physician urgently for any suspected fracture, since complications are more likely if you delay.
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