Auto Accidents Involving Impacted Fractures
Auto Accidents Involving Impacted Fractures
I’m Ed Smith, a Sacramento personal injury attorney. When the impact from a fall, motor vehicle collision, or other accident is strong enough to introduce a crack into a bone, a bone fracture results. Bone fractures come in many varieties, depending on the location of the injury, as well as the specific cause of the fracture and its severity. Some types of fractures – such as avulsion fractures – can even occur because of quite minor impacts, but in the presence of other factors such as osteoporosis or especially strenuous athletic activity. These sorts of fractures generally do not require much, if any, medical attention and sometimes even remain undetected or undiagnosed indefinitely.
Impacted Fractures Are More Serious
One of the more serious types of bone fracture appears when the trauma from injury is forceful enough to shatter an area of bone and to drive one or more fragments of bone into another section of bone. This is called an impacted fracture. Generally, impacted fractures only develop after more serious injuries, including car accidents, falls involving height, and dramatically unnatural twisting of the affected bone. It is exceedingly rare for an impacted fracture to result simply from frequent physical exertion of the bone in question or from a minor fall, such as one from the standing position to the ground.
Sharp Pain
It is extremely unlikely for an impacted fracture to go undetected, as an avulsion fracture might, due to both the high likelihood of sharp pain and to the ease of identification by X-ray. Depending on the part of the skeleton which has suffered injury, in some impacted fracture cases the patient’s movement will be severely restricted, since to perform normal physical movement might lead to extreme pain, as the bone fragments are pushed further into each other. Bruises and swelled areas also frequently surface at the injured point on the body in impacted fracture situations.
Surgery
Surgery, sometimes major, is typically required in the wake of an impacted fracture injury. These type of fractures can present some difficulties for the surgeon: The bone or bone structure may not be able to support itself once the fragments are disbanded from one another, a crucial first step in the process of reconstruction. If this is the case, pins, rods, or other mechanisms may be needed to keep the bone from moving or collapsing during the healing process. It is especially likely that such reconstructive devices will be necessary if the bone which experiences the impacted fracture is a large one, if more than one site of bone fragment collision occurs, or both.
The Hip
Unfortunately, such conditions are often the case for one of the more common bones to suffer impacted fracture, the hip. The “hip bone” is actually a group of three bones which, together, constitute one of the largest and most critical bone structures in the body, protecting several vital organs as well as major nerves and blood vessels. Hip fractures frequently arise as secondary injuries, following a break at the top (“neck”) of the femur, the upper bone of the leg. The lower part of the hip bone connects with the femural neck, and a break to the latter is often the cause of a fracture to the former. Impacted hip fractures usually require screws, pins, or some other reconstructive mechanism, and sometimes full hip replacements.
Sacramento Personal Injury and Bone Fracture Attorney
I’m Ed Smith, a Sacramento Personal Injury Attorney. If you or someone you care about has suffered an impacted fracture, please call me today for free and friendly advice. I can be reached at (916) 921-6400 or toll free at (800) 404-5400.
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