![]() When you have a rib fracture, your body tries to relatively isolate that area and as a result after rib fractures there are higher incidents of pneumonias.ĭr. You can imagine if the ribs and the chest walls as a very dynamic instrument and so as you take a deep breath in and out, the chest expands in and out. And so as a result the body tries to respond by trying to immobilize that area, and this is where we start running into problems. The chest pads absorb the energy instead of their ribs.ĭr. Miller: So they don't fracture their ribs. Miller: Well, obviously, the reason that football players wear these chest pads.ĭr. You can't really do that with the ribs, and so you're kind of left with the damage as a result of the injury and then now you're literally trying to put. The difference of course is a bicycle helmet you can throw away and buy a new one. An analogy I often use with patients is if you think about a good bicycle helmet, you know a bicycle helmet is good because it absorbs the force and it cracks. There's a variety of different mechanisms, and if you think about it, the ribs and the chest wall are really intended to absorb the force to protect everything on the inside and so it's doing its job. Varghese: Automobile accidents, very bad skiing accidents, diving accidents. Miller: How would that happen? An automobile accident, perhaps?ĭr. So early indications are if you have something called flail chest which is multiple rib fractures really leading to a dissociation of a segment of the chest wall that impairs with your ability to breathe.ĭr. And this is again going into the consideration that oftentimes rib fractures don't occur in isolation. Do they injure the lung at times? Flail Chest (Multiple Rib Fractures)ĭr. Miller: How about at the time of the injury? I mean, a fractured rib, the points of the bone could be sharp. Non-union is defined by after two to three months' period of time and the fracture is there, even if the alignment is correct and you don't see any evidence of healing, that's an indication for a surgical intervention.ĭr. We first start thinking about surgical interventions after rib fractures, really after a two-month period of time. Varghese: Some discomfort and some pain even afterwards. Miller: So they can expect to have some discomfort?ĭr. Varghese: It's usually, generally bone healing takes about four to six weeks.ĭr. How long does it usually take for a rib to heal? That is, the patient will say, "I'm having pain." What is it, two weeks, three weeks, six weeks?ĭr. How Long Does It Take a Broken Rib to Heal?ĭr. With the fracture there, is the bone in alignment? And as long as the alignment is okay, giving those patients pain relief, a period of rest, rib fractures should heal by themselves. ![]() Varghese: The good thing is 85 percent of rib fractures heal on their own, and what we're really looking at is the alignment. When might you look at that fracture and say, "You know, it's not really going to heal without me going in there and repairing the rib?"ĭr. Miller: So a patient falls and is injured in a sports event, a sporting event. ![]() Is the injury only in the ribs or is there associated nerve damage? Is there associated muscle damage or other bones affected? Because really, we can't just isolate and just treat the ribs without considering other damage that's occurred as a result of the injury.ĭr. It's one of the things that we have to really talk to patients about and try to differentiate it out. ![]() ![]() They occur in conjunction with other types of injury. Oftentimes rib fractures don't occur in isolation. One of the things that we really go down to get the detail about is the mechanism of the injury. Tom, tell us a little bit about when patients come to you for rib fractures and is there a surgical treatment for that? Obviously, you can't cast a fractured rib, so when can you surgically intervene on a fractured rib?ĭr. He's a thoracic surgeon and works in the Department of Surgery here at the University of Utah. We're going to talk about that next on Scope Radio. Miller: Surgical interventions for rib fractures. ![]()
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