Wrist Fracture

Selected Features of Our Program

Evaluation and Diagnosis

The wrist is a naturally weak area in the body and is easily injured. Events as simple as tripping and falling to trauma as major as an auto accident can cause wrist fractures and ligament injuries. Patients often pass the injury off as just a sprain and do not seek medical treatment right away. It is easy to miss a major injury in the wrist on x-ray without specific expertise in wrist surgery. A missed injury showing up later as an unsolvable problem is the biggest issue in the whole field of wrist fractures and instability. Proper diagnosis requires only an office examination and x-rays by an expert in the field.

Treatment and Recovery

Certain patterns of wrist fractures can be properly treated without surgery using casts and splints. Most major wrist injuries require some form of surgery. Fortunately, most wrist trauma surgery can be done arthroscopically with a fiber-optic camera. This device gives the surgeon the ability to thoroughly evaluate the entire wrist and avoid missing any injuries. Since there are only minute holes in the skin made for this procedure, hardly any additional scarring takes place from the surgery process. The current techniques for these injury patterns are extremely modern and highly specialized, but are far less invasive than the standard techniques. Certain fractures in the wrist will require some additional surgical incisions to place stabilizing screws or plates on the fractures. By providing stability, early motion rehabilitation can be conducted to minimize stiffness and allow return to function at the earliest date. Healing is usually complete by 10 weeks with return to heavy lifting activities occurring several weeks later. Basic computer, paperwork, and daily activities can be done from the very beginning with a removable splint before the fractures are even healed as long as stability has been provided inside the bone.