General Information About Pain After A Fracture | Osteoporosis Canada (2024)

FAQs

What is the ongoing pain after a fracture? ›

Pain that persists after full healing is expected to have taken place is called chronic pain. Chronic pain may be due to nerve damage, the development of scar tissue, an aggravation of underlying arthritis or any number of other causes. Chronic pain is usually managed on an individual basis.

Your Recovery

Your doctor fixed a broken (fractured) bone without surgery. You can expect the pain from the bone to get much better almost right after the procedure. But you may have some pain for 2 to 3 weeks and mild pain for up to 6 weeks.

Sometimes, kids get small fractures and don't even know it. Other times, your body may be in shock so you don't feel anything at all--at first. But usually a broken bone means a deep, intense ache. And depending on the break, you may feel sharp pain, too.

The femur is often put at the top of the most painful bones to break. Your femur is the longest and strongest bone in your body, running from your hip to your knee. Given its importance, it's not surprising that breaking this bone is an incredibly painful experience, especially with the constant weight being put on it.

Complex regional pain syndrome (CRPS) is a painful condition of a person's arm, hand, leg or foot, which occurs after an injury, such as a fracture. Rarely, CRPS can affect other body parts, such as the face. Symptoms can range from mild to severe, and may last months or years.

The GDG recognised that the initial management of pain in a person with a suspected or obvious fracture would include splinting, elevation, traction, realignment, reduction, protection from pressure and rest.

During the day, most people are more active, which keeps the synovial fluid flowing to the fracture. Synovial fluid is a liquid in all bone joints that helps lubricate the joint with movement and reduces swelling. At night, with less activity, movement of the synovial fluid is limited, which leads to pain and swelling.

As fractures can take from six weeks to a few months to heal, the pain will become problematic while the muscles and tissue around the bone weaken because of immobility.

Over the next few hours, the cells at the fracture site release healing chemicals and signals that cause new nerves to sprout. These new nerves are what cause sharp pain when you move the broken bone and a dull, aching pain while it's resting.

Osteoporosis doesn't affect how quickly your bones heal. Most fractures are better in 6 to 12 weeks. Chances are, you'll spend many of those weeks at home. Learning to get around can take time, but you can do some things to get back to your normal activities more quickly and stay healthy while you're at it.

How to speed up fracture healing process? ›

Swelling, bruising, or bleeding. Intense pain. Numbness and tingling. Broken skin with bone protruding.

Comminuted fractures take longer to heal than other kinds of broken bones. They're also much more likely to involve complications.

Example: A comminuted fracture is the most difficult to repair due to the bone having fractured into numerous pieces. Multiple bone pieces require more effort to hold them together in the ideal position for healing.

After about a week or two, the worst of the pain will be over. What happens next is that the fractured bone and the soft tissue around it start to heal. This takes a couple of weeks and is called subacute pain. You may still be on pain medication, but it may be a lower dosage or a weaker drug.

A fracture that remains painful months after an injury indicates a problem with bone healing. If your doctor also sees on an X-ray or other imaging test that the bone is not healing, that is often enough information to confirm the diagnosis.

They found that the risk of chronic widespread body pain was increased if participants reported having a past fracture, especially spine and hip fractures. Professor Harvey added: “Chronic widespread pain is common, and leads to substantial health related problems and disability.

Decreased Pain

In extreme cases, this can be a seriously disabling pain that makes it hard to think of anything else, let alone move correctly. If you notice the pain suddenly starting to decrease without having used any painkillers or other pain-relief methods, then there is a high chance that your bones are healing.

Phantom pains, often similar to the pains that a runner first experiences when a stress fracture develops, can lead a runner to believe that the stress fracture has not fully healed or that another has developed in exactly the same place.