Our goal will be to build strength and endurance so you can resume your everyday activities. As your healing progresses, we will work with you and your physician to design a program to increase your strength and range of motion, and improve flexibility. Talk to your physician about the walking boot option. So, if you are faced with a broken fibula, don’t panic. Physical therapy is most effective when you stick to the schedule and assigned exercises, and continue to care for the injury while at home. Remember, you are rehabilitating the muscles around a bone that suffered a traumatic injury.Ĭommitment to the physical therapy plan is key to effective healing. It is important to remember that when physical therapy begins, there is a strong possibility of muscle pain and fatigue. Although the boot speeds up general recovery time, recovery times fluctuate depending on the severity of the break and the patient’s commitment to physical therapy. The length of recovery is not the same for everyone. This theory applies to all types of fractures: nondisplaced (the bone retains its proper alignment), displaced (the bone ends do not line up) and compound (the bone breaks through the skin). The walking motion reduces muscle atrophy, which in the end makes physical therapy more effective because, without atrophy, strengthening exercises can start sooner. The boot immobilizes the leg and protects the bone, but it does not restrict movement of the surrounding muscle tissue. Because the burden on the bone is minimal-compared with the burden on the tibia or femur-using a walking boot often shortens recovery time. While your fibula-the long, thin outside bone of your lower leg-is healing, you should stay mobile through the use of a walking boot to speed up the recovery process.Īlthough the fibula is considered a weight-bearing bone, it bears only 17% of your total body weight when upright. But after the initial phase, sitting on the couch and letting it heal on its own is probably not the best approach. It typically takes a 10 weeks for the bone to heal completely, however once there is no pain over the break, and x-rays show signs of healing, there is low risk for re-injury or displacement at the fracture site, so kids can begin walking again as much as they can tolerate.A broken fibula often starts immobilization. The cast can removed around 4-6 weeks, as long as the tibia bone is no longer tender. X-rays are repeated 2 weeks after the injury to ensure there are signs of healing. They often also bend the knee slightly so that kids can't walk excessively on the injured leg while its this cast (although recent studies have shown no increased risk of bone displacement or delayed healing when kids are allowed walk on their broken leg within the cast). Doctors will put on a cast from the toes, past the knee, all the way to the mid-thigh. Treating a Toddler's Fracture: These injuries almost always heal very well after being casted to protect the bone while it heals. In such cases without an obvious crack on x-ray, follow up x-rays 2 weeks later will show signs of bone healing, indicating that there was a true break, just too small to be seen on x-ray. In fact, sometimes the x-rays won't show any crack, but doctors with a high suspicion for a this injury will still treat it as a break once they rule out other causes for a limp. But remember that in the vast majority of case the crack is very small and the bone remains perfectly aligned. X-rays are also useful to measure the bone alignment and to make sure the break didn't cause the bone to shorten more than 1 cm, or bend more than 10 degrees.
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