Trauma Cases
Orthopaedic trauma refers to a serious injury of the skeletal or muscular system caused by an external force, such as a fall or a car accident. While this type of injury is not always life-threatening, it can be life-changing, which is why it’s crucial to seek medical attention right away.
That doesn’t necessarily mean a trip to your nearest urgent care center – these injuries may require the unique expertise of an orthopaedic trauma physician.
Orthopedic trauma conditions include fractures and dislocations as well as severe soft tissue injuries caused by traumatic events. Common orthopedic traumatic injuries include femoral and tibial shaft fractures, acetabular and pelvic fractures, spine and spinal cord injuries, hand and upper extremity injuries, foot and ankle injuries, among many others. Polytraumatized patients are those unique individuals with numerous skeletal and other primary organ system injuries, usually caused by high energy traumatic events. We coordinate the orthopedic portion of the patient's care with other subspecialties in order to optimize the clinical outcome.
In addition to treating traumatic injuries when they occur, orthopedic specialists and surgeons treat chronic lasting after-effects of traumatic injuries, including:
- Fractures that did not heal (non-unions) or are delayed in healing
- Bone or joint conditions resulting from fractures that did not heal in the correct alignment (mal-unions)
- Joint deformity from arthritis
- Infections
Common Causes of Orthopaedic Trauma
Most often, traumatic orthopaedic injuries are caused by:
- Falling
- Being involved in a car or motorcycle accident
- Physical violence
- Being injured while playing a sport (basketball and football have the highest number of orthopaedic injuries)
- Natural disasters
Treatments
- Fracture stabilization
- Debridement
- Soft-tissue reconstruction
- Freely vascularized soft and hard tissue grafting
- Microsurgery
- Bone transport, autograft and allograft techniques
- Deformity correction
- Fusion of joints (Arthrodesis)
- Complex arthrodesis after joint infection
- Bone grafting
- Removal/eradication of infection for total joint arthroplasty
- Localized and systemic antibiotic delivery
