Indianapolis Broken Bone Injuries
Fractures are prevalent when experiencing vehicular, bike, and pedestrian accidents. The average driver will experience three or four crashes during their lifetime, so it’s more than possible that you’ll experience a bone breaking at some point.
If you suffered broken bones due to another person’s negligence, you could file a personal injury claim. The claim requires the at-fault driver to pay compensation for the medical therapy, lost wages, pain and suffering, emotional trauma, loss of consortium, and more.
Call Crossen Law Firm for legal support if you were injured in Indiana. We offer 24/7 phone support at 317-401-8626, and you can also contact us online here.
What Are The Most Common Types of Fractures?
Different types of fractures and personal injuries can have radically different levels of severity, prognosis, and required medical treatments.
If you were exposed to fire or caustic chemicals, you may have soft tissue involvement burns in addition to these fractures:
- Compound Fractures: Compound fractures occur when a bone breaks and penetrates the skin. These severe fractures can cause serious infections because of the open wound and are organized by severity in three categories, known as the Gustilo System.
- Open Fractures: An open fracture occurs when the bone breaks through the skin at the fracture site. These injuries are incredibly dangerous because they can lead to bone death (due to loss of blood blow), infection,
- Closed Fractures: A closed fracture occurs when a broken bone doesn’t penetrate the skin.
- Hairline Fractures: A hairline fracture, or a small crack in the bone, is less severe than the other stress fractures.
- Complete Bone Fractures: Complete fractures of the human body occur when the entire width of a bone breaks.
- Compression Fractures: Compression fractures occur when vertebrae are compressed and break due to trauma.
- Oblique Fractures: Oblique fractures occur when someone breaks a bone at an angle, leaving it unstable. This bone fracture is incredibly severe and requires immediate medical care.
- Spiral Fractures: Spiral fractures occur from a sudden twisting motion that makes the bone’s break appear like a spiral. Like the oblique fracture, the spiral fracture requires immediate medical attention.
- Transverse Bone Fractures: These fractures occur when a bone is broken at a right angle.
- Greenstick Fractures: These types of fractures occur when a bone bends and fractures the outer side. A greenstick fracture is common in young children.
What Fractures Are Common After a Car Crash?
Due to the impact of an car accident, certain areas of your body are more likely to experience a fracture than others.
A few common fractures that occur after car accidents include:
Lower Extremity Fractures: These include your feet, ankles, and the lower parts of your legs. Wrecks that involve high speeds often result in tibia fractures. This fracture usually requires surgery and rehabilitation.
Spinal Fractures: Many different injuries can occur to your spinal column during a car accident. Your spine can become compressed, or you may even suffer from the severing of your spinal cord, which leads to paralysis.
Skull Fractures: Skull fractures often lead to severe or even fatal injuries because of brain trauma. These fractures are common when a vehicle flips over, or someone is ejected from a car due to the impact.
Upper Extremity Fractures: Upper extremity fractures occur from shoulder joint fractures, wrist fractures, or humerus fractures. Upper extremity fractures often require surgery.
Facial Fractures: Facial fractures are more common than you may think when experiencing a car accident. Around 11 percent of those injured in a car accident break at least one of their 14 facial bones. Common fractures include nose fractures, eye socket fractures, and jaw fractures.
Femur Fractures: The femur is the strongest bone in your body but can break due to a high-impact car crash. Femur breaks are often accompanied by blood vessel damage and significant tissue damage.
Pelvic Fractures: Pelvic breaks often occur from vehicle ejection. Pelvic fractures usually require surgery as well as an extended period of rehabilitation time.
Rib Fractures: Serious car accidents frequently result in rib fractures. These fractures can puncture your lung and cause it to collapse.
Treating Broken Bones
No matter what the cause of your injury, early fracture management is essential to maintain bone length, prevent ischemic injury, preserve the injured limb segment, and reduce the chance of developing a blood clot.
When you suspect you’ve broken a bone, seek immediate medical attention. After going to the emergency room or another medical facility, you will likely receive a physical examination from a medical professional to diagnose broken bones and soft tissue injuries. Additionally, your doctor will also consider how you fractured the bone. For example, when compound or transverse bone fractures occur, they require more urgent and serious intervention.
Treating broken bones often involves a combination of methods depending on the severity of the injury, such as surgical procedures like open reduction internal fixation surgery to align and stabilize the fracture.
In more complex cases like pelvic fractures, external fixation may be employed, while skeletal traction may be used to gently align the bones and promote healing until the fracture heals completely.
- External fixation is a surgical procedure where pins or screws are attached to a frame outside the body.
- Skin traction involves attachment of weights or other devices to the skin surrounding the injured area, applying a gentle pulling force to align fractured bones.
More severe breaks may require another surgical method, a closed fracture reduction procedure, or surgical therapy open reduction internal fixation (ORIF)surgery.
How Do My Bones Heal?
Understanding how your body reacts to a fracture is important because it can impact your recovery and the compensation you might seek in a personal injury case.
The bone healing process involves five main stages:
- Hematoma Formation: A collection of blood, called a hematoma, forms at the site of the fracture.
- Inflammation: The hematoma begins to heal, and certain cells remove damaged bone tissue.
- Cell Growth: Bone cells begin forming on the outer and inner layers of the bone.
- Callus Formation: A soft callus or fibrous tissue forms initially, gradually hardening over time.
- Remodeling: The newly formed bone undergoes remodeling, becoming stronger and more organized.
Your doctor will decide what types of intervention (like skin traction, internal fixation, external fixation, or skeletal traction) are needed for fracture stabilization while your fracture line heals.
Receiving Compensation For Indianapolis Broken Bone Injuries
Bone fracture medical costs include expensive consultations, diagnostic tests, skeletal traction, multiple surgeries, and extensive physical therapy. Our law firm is dedicated to assisting individuals who have suffered broken bone injuries. We will handle communication with the insurance company on behalf of our clients, negotiating with insurance adjusters to secure a fair settlement that adequately covers our client’s damages, including medical expenses, lost wages, and pain and suffering.
Contact Crossen Law Firm for Indianapolis Broken Bone Injuries
If you suffered a car accident in Indianapolis or another accident that led to a bone fracture, contact Crossen Law Firm.
You deserve expert legal assistance to help you with your motor vehicle accident claim, and our personal injury lawyers at Crossen Law Firm have helped countless Indiana residents. To learn more about how we can help you with your claim, call 317-401-8626 or contact us online here.
Why Crossen Law Firm?
Call our office today at (317) 401-8626 to discuss your case.