What to Expect from Orthopedic Care

When you injury a bone you need orthopedic care to ensure the bone recovers and heals properly. Your bones are not rock solid, dead objects like you may envision from skeletons that you see on Halloween. Your bones are actually living tissue and although the outside is relevantly hard and resistant, the center of your bone is soft and hollow, filled with marrow which is full of red blood cells and the nutrients needed to keep your bones alive and functioning. Because your bones are living tissue they are able to heal after a break or a fracture in a process called remodeling. However if the bone is not set right it also won't heal right which can lead to complications and secondary medical problems such as a limp or a limb that has limited range of motion and use.

But it doesn't always take a broken or fractured bone to send you into orthopedic care. A specialist can treat you for other conditions that affect your bones other than breaks such as bone tumors.

There are two classifications of bone tumors- either benign which is non-cancerous or malign which is cancerous. Cancerous bone tumors are treated by a doctor who specializes in cancer such as an oncologist. For benign tumors however a patient can remain under orthopedic care and the bone specialist can remove the tumor and then do a bone graft to replace the lost bone matter.

A bone graft works in one of three ways. Either the bone graft is harvested from another area of the patient's body, usually a hip bone which involves a surgical procedure to accomplish, or the bone graft is obtained from a donor or is synthetic bone. Donor bone comes from cadavers whose bone was donated to a bone bank and the bone is screened against any transmittable diseases just as any tissue donation is making it a safe source for bone grafts.

Since bone is living tissue a graft works by allowing the living bone tissue to replenishing and grow into the original patient's bone. This remodeling process is similar to how a bone heals after a break or fracture but can take longer to complete. Depending on the size of hole left by the bone tumor and the growth rate for the graft itself, it usually takes about a year for this particular orthopedic procedure to complete itself.

Bone grafts are unique in that this is one type of body tissue that can regenerate on its own with just a little help from a doctor to ensure the bones are set properly for re-growth. Since this considered an area of medical specialty if you need orthopedic care your general doctor will refer you or the doctor you see in the ER likely will.