This text based course is a transcript of the live webinar titled, "Distal Radius, Metacarpal & Proximal Phalanx Fractures", presented by Rebecca von der Heyde, PhD, OTR/L, CHT.
Objectives
Let’s begin by looking at the objectives. The objectives for the talk today are to identify the rehabilitative factors that contribute to fracture healing. We are going to try to determine the optimal positions for mobilization following fractures, and we are going to try to explain the benefits of early controlled motion following a fracture. Hopefully by the end of this talk you will have some good information about distal radius, metacarpal, and proximal phalanx fractures to bring back to your practice areas.
Fracture Fixation and Healing
We are going to begin with fracture fixation and healing. Typically what happens is the patient is going to arrive, whether in the emergency room or to the doctor’s office, with a fracture. The question becomes what type of fracture do they have. I will explain to you why this is important to our clinical decision-making in just a second.
Fracture Classification
First let's go through our different types of fractures that could be classified by the doctor. The first piece of information the doctor could tell us is the depth of the fracture. A fracture can be complete or incomplete, meaning that complete fracture is a fracture in which the bone fragments separate completely, whereas an incomplete fracture is a fracture in which the bone fragments are still partially joined. If we knew this information, complete or incomplete, we could determine the stability. That is going to be one of the factors that will contribute to the stability of that healing fracture.
