Fractures and Bone Repair (Nursing)

00:01 So now let's switch gears and talk about what happens when the bone is broken? So a fracture is a break in a bone.

00:11 And there are actually many different types of fractures that can occur.

00:16 We'll discuss the different fractures shortly.

00:18 But for now let's talk about how we heal fractures? The healing process is going to involve three different phases that occur and approximately four steps.

00:30 The first phase of healing of a bone fracture is going to be the reactive phase.

00:36 So the bone has been broken.

00:38 And now there's a space between the two pieces.

00:42 During this process, the cellular debris is going to now need to be phagocytes hosts by immune cells.

00:50 So this is going to elicit an inflammatory response.

00:54 As well there's a recruitment of a lot of blood and other cells in order to clean up this area.

01:01 This results in the formation of a blood hematoma between the two fragments of bone.

01:10 During the reparative phase, we are now going to start forming a cartilaginous callus or cartilaginous band aid between the two pieces of bone.

01:22 As well in this phase after we form the cartilage, we also start to replace that cartilage with bone tissue.

01:31 This results in A. The formation of the fibrocartilaginous callus and B. The formation of the bony callus.

01:40 After the formation of the bony callus, we finally get the remodeling phase.

01:45 In this phase, we're just going to remodel the bone so that it takes on the original shape that the bone had before it was fractured.

01:53 In some people, this remodelling is so well that you cannot even tell that there was a fracture in the first place.

02:04 So as I said in the previous slide, we're going to discuss several different types of fractures.

02:11 So the first type of fracture we're going to discuss is called an open fracture.

02:16 This occurs when the breaking of the bone leads to the bone going through the skin and protruding out of the skin.

02:24 This is in contrast to a close fracture, where the bone does not break the skin.

02:31 In the second type of fracture, we have a comminuted fracture.

02:36 In the comminuted fracture, the bone has been broken and it also results in small splinters or pieces of bone around the fracture as well.

02:48 A third type of fracture, which exclusively occurs in children, as their bones are not completely calcified or hardened yet is the greenstick fracture.

02:58 We call it the greenstick fracture because it resembles the green twigs.

03:04 So when you break the green twig it might break on one end, but the other end does not completely break and instead it bends.

03:12 So, again, this only occurs in small children whose bones are not completely developed yet.

03:21 Another type of fracture is an impacted fracture.

03:25 This is called this because it results from an impact of the bones.

03:30 The two bones are going to snap together and push into each other.

03:38 Another type of fracture is the Pott fracture.

03:41 This fracture is specific for a fracture that occurs in the ankle of the body.

03:50 And also we have the Colles fracture.

03:54 Like the pott fracture, this one is specific for a certain part of the body.

03:58 In this case, the wrist.