DAVIE, Fla. – Wrist fractures are one of the most common fractures in the U.S. and the risk increases with age.
Some surgeons are working with a less invasive option to surgical repair that allows patients to return to normal function faster.
When Marcia Silverstein retired, she decided to find a new way to stay engaged and active.
“My goal was to get out, exercise, get off the fact that for 40 years I’d been behind a computer and sitting around,” she said.
Silverstein got serious about learning how to play tennis, a game she’d casually dabbled in for years.
Less than a year in, she took a painful fall on the court.
“I went back to hit, lost my balance and next thing I know, feel right on my wrist and heard the crack and I just knew it, I knew it was broken,” Silverstein said.
Based on past family experiences Silverstein immediately turned to Dr. Roy Cardoso, an orthopedic hand surgeon with Baptist Health South Florida.
“Wrists are very, very commonly broken. You reach out with your hands to stop a fall with your hands and we get broken bones,” he said.
Cardoso is working with something called the ‘IlluminOss’ procedure.
Instead of invasive plates and screws, it works by inserting a flexible tube in the bone through a very small insides on, then inflating the tube with an inert liquid that hardens once exposed to blue light.
“And it conforms to the patient’s anatomy so you can fix a fracture. So you put a little balloon in, you inflate the balloon and you turn it from liquid to solid,” Cardoso said.
Instead of waiting weeks, even months, for the injury to heal, patients recovery quickly and with minimal scarring.
“I’m still amazed. I mean it’s two years later and it’s still amazing. I don’t even feel like I ever went through that process although I am more careful on the court. I don’t ever go backwards because I don’t want to have an experience like that again,” Silverstein said.
While revolutionary for some patients, the procedure does have limitations which means many still need to undergo an open surgery using plates, screws and sometimes a hard cast.