Physical therapy for a broken femur
(4 discussions)
I broke my left femur on 9/12/03.
I am on crutches, and the break was repaired with a rod.
I have asked my orthopedist on several occasions about physical therapy, and he said it was not necessary because my injury involved a bone, not a joint.
When I am finally weight-bearing, should I pursue physical therapy, or listen to my surgeon??
4 comments
May PT
Maybe Mya, PT will have more to offer, but I seldom have heard of cases, such as yours, which would not greatly benefit from some PT. I am sure that since you are still not weight-bearing, your thigh muscles (quads) have shrunken (atrophied) with the non-weight bearing. When you lose muscle tone in your thigh [front (quads) and back (hamstrings)], your knee becomes very weak and unstable, and it usually takes some PT to get a patient back up to full strength. I also would wonder if you really have your full range-of-motion in the hip and knee back? Were you in a full-leg cast at any point; and, if so, for how long? Most of the patients with a femoral rod do go to PT… Do you have one of those HMO type policies which discourages PT? It is true that the bone will heal fine w/o PT, but I am worried about the muscles and your range-of-motion. Regardless, if I were you, I would demand some PT. If you don’t get it, ask the doctor to put your specific request in your chart, in case legal action in required in the future…that, alone, might be enough to scare your insurance company into allowing the PT. Take it one step at a time, and let us know how you make out. Good luck!
Lee
Hello,
I broke my femur in October 2012 and I am now just starting to get on the road to recovery although it is still very painful. I live in Mid England, UK and I did it whilst chasing someone for assault(I am a Police Officer)
I tripped and broke my femur and had a rod and screws placed in the cavity of the bone. You will need physio and it will be necessary to get you fully weight bearing again.
Good LuckLee
Sunbeam10
My wife fell while playing with our granddaughter on Sept. 21, 2013,with a spiral fracture of the left femur, extending from the “elbow” about half-way south. Result: a rod inserted during surgery at the University of Maryland Shock Trauma Center, where she was immediately referred by a community hospital because of the fracture’s severity. It’s a relatively rare injury, said the surgeon, who is the No. 2 orthopedic guy at the ST unit. This is January 2014,and my wife, who is 60, has indeed benefited from twice-weekly PT since early October but, still, just got weaned from using a walker about two weeks before Christmas. She now uses a cane, all the time; can’t walk without it or some holding onto something to ease pressure on that leg. She started doing stairs a week before Christmas and then driving; thank goodness, it was her left leg, not the right. She’s back to work only since last week, and at that only five hours a day. She simply can’t stay seated in front of a computer for longer, and even that’s been a very trying experience physically and emotionally.By utter coincidence and/or bad luck, I required arthroscopic surgery for my right knee (torn cartilage problem) on Dec. 9 — unrelated to my wife’s fall. So, now, both of us are going to PT, she to one shop, me to another. We have similar exercises to pursue, interestingly enough, although my repair is a whole lot less complex than hers simply because of the injuries. The consensus of therapists we’ve talked with at both offices is that a fractured femur ranks as one of the most difficult and time-consuming injuries to rehab, not because of the break itself, but because of the extreme trauma the break and surgery caused to the muscles, ligaments, tendons, etc., within that thigh,knee and hip. Correcting the problems, they concur, takes time, as in many months, perhaps approaching a year, although that varies from patient to patient. And no, said my wife’s surgeon, even if she does the required PT work, which she’s pursuing diligently, she’ll get back maybe 90 percent of the flexibility she had before… And he hasn’t been a “downer” of a doctor, either; rather, he’s been frank, realistic, conversational, able to talk in lay terms, and a good counselor, thus far.Repeat: Your doctor’s advice seems stunningly ill-informed and plain stupid.
Ted Pakenham
Hi
On October 15 2013 I broke my right Femur at the Trochanter region wich is below the socket and just at the start of the angle to the pelvis. It was a clean break. My doctor held the two ends together with a pin and 4 screws. Now after 2 months the bones are now completely fused and I have no pain except where the muscles were manipulated. I attend physio 3 times per week, which is necessary because when the muscles are not worked they weaken rapidly. So I would go to physio and make sure they know what they are doing. I also took a lot of Calcium and Vitamin D. I wish you well