Broken thumb 1st metacarpal

secretsqizz

I cant get any sensible answers from our glorious NHS.... but I broke me thumb.. JUST me thumb ... why is my arm up to elbow also in plaster?????
Any medic in the house ... qualified or not..

should I have gone private?

It is just p' ing me off now after 2 weeks and another 2 weeks to go and cant get on the bike

keef66

They clearly don't want you hitch-hiking anywhere before your next check-up.

My son recently broke his elbow, so we assumed he'd be in plaster for 6 weeks. However, after 6 days the temporary back-slab was removed and he was sent home with a bit of tubigrip and a sling! Perverse!

pbt150

Mate of mine got knocked off his bike and broke both bones in his left forearm clean in two. A few plates and pins later and all he had was a sling and no cast at all.

felgen

secretsqizz wrote:

I cant get any sensible answers from our glorious NHS.... but I broke me thumb.. JUST me thumb ... why is my arm up to elbow also in plaster?????
Any medic in the house ... qualified or not..

Was it a Bennett's fracture? Sounds like it. If so your thumb is at risk of slipping off the bone that it sits on top of (the metacarpal), so the thumb has to be held out in the right position (checked with X-ray to see that the bone is indeed in the right position in the cast), and to get it held there well enough it needs a cast that has some support to prevent movement, so it has to include the arm...

*edit* you said you had fractured the metacarpal - in which case again, due to the flexor muscles wanting to pull the fracture out of position, the thumb has to be held out extended to counteract this, again with a forearm cast to provide support in this position.

HTH

secretsqizz

Ta for the clarifying....sounds sensible... just not a very patient patient is my trouble.

Ands

Mr Ands broke his thumb in a crash a couple of years ago - he had a cast half way up his forearm. He just had to make do with the turbo!

Can you go private for a fracture? Mr A has medical insurance through work but he still went to the NHS for A&E, fracture clinic, etc. Even with med insurance you still need to use the NHS for some things.

felgen

Well you have to weigh up the downside of a cast with the long term roblems of a non or malunion (bone not healing at all or incorrectly)

Due to the out of hours nature of fractures and the fact that most private hospitals are not set up for trauma means that it isn't well represnted in the private sector. That and the fact that its not that lucrative so not worth the consultant's time