Well, we've got to talk about bone fractures, I suppose. So we're going to start off with the ability to classify fractures. I want you to think about maybe types of fractures you're familiar with, or maybe somebody that you know, maybe yourself, had some kind of a fracture in their bone. Picture the fracture in your mind, maybe you've seen an x-ray of it. I want you to think about ways to classify these fractures based on the following criteria.
The first is the position of the bone ends. Were the bone ends displaced, or were they non-displaced? And this simply means that they're out of their normal alignment.
The second classification would be the completeness of the fracture. Was it an incomplete fracture, or was it a complete fracture? Was it broken all the way through? The third classification is the orientation of the fracture, which means that it was either a linear fracture or a transverse fracture.
And we'll say that that particular classification is oftentimes the hardest. I mean there's not that many fractures that are clearly linear or transverse, so something maybe in between is a fair assessment. The fourth classification is, did it penetrate the skin?
Is it an open fracture or a closed fracture? Now those are the four ways that you classify fractures. I want you to separate that in your mind from common.
types of fractures. So the first type we're going to be looking at here, there's six of them we're going to be looking at. The first is called comminuted fracture, where the bone fragments into three or more pieces.
This is common in the elderly. I really like these pictures because they show the x-ray, which is not always totally clear, with a nice sketch right next to it so you can see what the actual bone break looks like. The second type of fracture is a compression fracture, where the bone is actually crushed. This will oftentimes also happen in elderly patients, usually to osteoporotic or porous bones, bones that are already lacking in density. And oftentimes this will happen after a fall, for example.
A spiral fracture is a very common sports injury. This is a ragged... The characteristic of a spiral fracture is that it actually looks like a spiral. It's a ragged break when the bone is excessively twisted.
An epiphyseal fracture is a very serious issue here. A separation along an epiphyseal plate. We'll talk in class about why that's so serious, but I want you to think about that. We're going to talk about some of the implications of this and how to fix some of the problems that might occur.
So this is a separation along. This is actually a complete. Epiphyseal fracture here, that's not always the case. It's not always the case that they will be complete.
The next type is a depressed fracture. Here, we have a broken bone portion that presses inward. This is a typical skull fracture.
And lastly, we have a green stick fracture. This is an incomplete fracture, where one side of the bone breaks and the other side simply bends. This is much more common in children where their bones are much more flexible. If you can think about a green stick, if you pick up a green stick off the ground, it's actually very difficult to snap it in half. It tends to bend rather than break.