Common Treatments for Bone Breaks or other Bone Injury

Beyond the most common forms of treatment for orthopedic injury – medication and physical therapy, below are a few other types of treatments typically seen following injuries stemming from car wrecks and slips and falls:

Ankle

Treatments that are common for ankle injuries such as sprains, fractures and tendon injuries include ankle fusion surgery, which would involve the placement of titanium plates and pins.

Spine Surgery

Spine injuries often lead to back and leg dysfunction and even to a total loss of function. Many spine related injuries require surgical treatment, examples of which are a spinal fusion and discectomy, while other treatments may be medical and physical therapy.

Joint Replacements

Surgeries like total or partial knee or hip replacement are options for victims suffering from severe joint disease or injury. These problems can be caused by changes within a joint following a car wreck or trip and fall injury. Joint replacement sometimes utilizes man-made implants as a substitution material for the degenerated joint. Known risks of such procedures are death and severe infections and, almost always, the patient of these surgeries will need anti rejection medication as well as powerful pain medication like vicodin, percocet and opium derivatives which can be extremely addictive.

Arthroscopic Surgery

Arthroscopic surgery is a surgical procedure that permits an orthopedic doctor to examine and even treat damage to the interior of a joint and is performed using an arthroscope (“scope”) that is inserted through a small incision. Arthroscopic procedures can be exploratory, meaning the doctor is simply examining a joint, or they can be used to actually treat an orthopaedic injury such as a damaged ACL or damaged cartilage.

The advantage to arthroscopy over open surgery is that since the joint and skin does not have to be fully opened, this minimizes recovery time and may also increase the rate of success because of less trauma to the tissues.

The joints that are most frequently examined and treated by arthroscopy are the foot, wrist, ankle, shoulder, elbow, knee and sometimes the hip.