Fracture of A bone

Fracture of A bone may be the result of a strain or twisting of a limb, causing a bone to snap at its weakest point, or they may result from being hit directly on the bone by a blunt or heavy object.

In youngsters a fracture of the forearm bones may occur, which seems as if the bones were not broken but only bent backward.Usually, however, the bones are incompletely fractured, and because of the softness of the bones they also bend.

In very young children it often happens that the bones bend without being fractured .These conditions are called "green stick" fractures.Bones will fracture sometimes from the slightest strain, if they are affected by disease which weakens them. The bones of the undernourished and of aged people break easily because they are very brittle.

People who have always subsisted on an adequate diet and continue to do so in their old age will not have their bones so brittle and weakened. In shops and factories workers often have their fingers and hands caught in machines, power and foot presses, or will have their fingers hit violently against machines or resistant objects with resulting injury and fracture.

Sometimes the fracture of a bone will be sensed by a person by the cracking sound, but very often the person will be entirely unenlightened as to whether he has had a bone broken.

In all such suspicious injuries an X-ray should be taken to make certain whether a fracture is present. When there is not much injury to the surrounding soft tissues or when the fragments are impacted or locked into each other. a fracture may be overlooked. But the X-ray will tell the story, and it should be used in all cases of suspected bone injury in order to avoid permanent deformity.