Radial Neck Fracture, surgery or no surgery?

January 26, 2020 5:02 PM

I fell and got an acute fracture of the radial neck. Does it need surgery? Please share your insight and experience if you’ve undergone this fracture. Details below.

I fell nearly 4 days ago and suffered a radial head fracture. The elbow X-ray says it’s displaced, and the forearm x-ray says it’s slightly displaced.
The first orthopedic doctor I saw said I needed surgery, but I’m going to get another opinion.
Under what circumstances is surgery called for? What are your experiences with such a fracture if you did or did not get surgery. Also it’s been almost four days since the fall, wha5 is the timeframe for scheduling surgery if I do need it.

posted by whatdoyouthink? to Health & Fitness (5 answers total)

As far as I know, a displaced fracture cannot get back in place without surgical intervention. There is an important nerve that risks getting severed in a displaced fracture like that, so it's important that you have it fixed. Good luck.
posted by Amy93 at 6:13 PM on January 26, 2020

If you need surgery, you want to schedule it as soon as possible, before the bone fragments starts growing back together in the wrong position. As far as timeframes go, my spouse recently had a displaced fracture of the humerus and had surgery 11 days later. I think it took us 4 or 5 days to get the referral to the surgeon and set up an initial consultation with him.
posted by belladonna at 7:19 PM on January 26, 2020

I haven't had that fracture, but I've had two distal radius fractures that were displaced. I had the first one reduced (i.e. pulled back into alignment) sufficiently without surgery and I had surgery on the second one. My surgery was 12 days after the break. The doctor clearly would have liked to schedule it sooner, but he said within 2 to 3 weeks of the injury is okay. This information may or may not apply to a break at the other end of the radius.
posted by Redstart at 7:54 PM on January 26, 2020

I had an elbow fracture, probably worse than yours. I had surgery a week after the fall, kept the elbow pretty much immobilized between fall and surgery if I remember correctly. In my case there was no ambiguity about whether surgery was needed, though. (It's not clear whether there's any ambiguity for you either, right? You've seen one surgeon and that surgeon said yes.)

My recovery was pretty long and involved a lot of physical therapy and I didn't get back full range of motion in the elbow, but I got back enough motion to have full function. My main advice is that if you can get physical therapy, do, and do everything they tell you to do.

Also, unfortunately, I had to have another surgery about five years later because of heterotopic ossification in the elbow getting in the way of the ulnar nerve. It's apparently not that uncommon. So if, a long time from now, you start getting weird numbness in that hand, get it checked out.
posted by escabeche at 9:50 PM on January 26, 2020 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: So I saw another doctor who advised waiting to see if it healed on it’s own. And in a couple of weeks if it was not healing properly then surgery. He said if he was in my place he’d wait to see if it healed. I have another opinion lined up tomorrow.
posted by whatdoyouthink? at 8:33 PM on January 27, 2020