DENVER, Colo. (Ivanhoe Newswire) — You don’t have to be an extreme athlete to have felt the extreme pain from broken ribs. Millions of people know what it feels like to break or fracture a rib, or several ribs. Most of the time, patients are sent home, told to take it easy and let it heal. But for some, the pain just doesn’t go away. Now there’s a procedure to help ease the pain.
Whether it happened during a car crash, a fall, or a ball game…
“I’ve seen a patient that got a bear hug and broke some ribs,” said Farshad Farnejad, MD, Critical Care Surgeon at North Suburban Medical Center.
A broken or fractured rib can make every breath you take painful!
“If my fingers are the ribs, they sit on top of a bundle of nerves and vessels. So, any disruption in the bone integrity will kind of impinge on the nerves right underneath each rib. So, it is quite a painful injury,” explained Dr. Farnejad.
When those ribs don’t heal, or when multiple ribs are broken — rib fixation or plating can help. Surgeons screw titanium plates along the surface of the broken or cracked ribs.
“You basically realign it and put a plate across it to reinforce it. So, then it has a structural integrity back,” he said.
Rib plating can be done either directly under the skin, with the plate laying on top of the ribs, or from inside the chest cavity, underneath the ribs — depending on severity of the injury.
“Once you put the plates in, the plates stay in forever,” stated Dr. Farnejad.
This procedure can be done immediately after the injury occurs, or even years later.
Patients often report that their pain is either almost completely gone or entirely gone within 48 hours of the procedure. Rib plating can also be done in children, but unlike adult patients, there may be a need for a second surgery to remove the plate to allow for the ribs to continue to grow.
Contributors to this news report include: Marsha Lewis, Producer; Matt Goldschmidt, Videographer; Roque Correa, Editor.
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