I’m hoping to get a better understanding how bones fuse together and how long it takes for the maximum amount of fusion to occur, that will be able to occur, with external fixator pins setting the bones after a mal Union fracture.
Can bones be refractured by pin removal?
In: Biology
Some things depend on age. The doctor isn’t going to remove the pins if the bones can’t take it. It takes longer for older people.
After my teenage son who broke his forearm (and needed an internal titanium rod inserted through the length of the bone) the fracture reached sufficient fusion at 3 months to have the cast removed, and the X ray actually showed the bone had thickened around the fractured area. He’s getting the rod out at 6 months, when the bone is expected to be completely fused.
When I was a teenager I had an accident with a planer-joiner that chopped up two fingers on my left hand, and the little pieces of bone were pinned together (with the ends of the pins sticking out of my skin) for more than 3 months.
An elderly person’s bone takes much longer to heal, and is more brittle than a growing person’s bone.
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