Speeding up healing of foot fractures and ankle fractures are  the number one priority if this happens to you.

Ankle Fracture

 In previous posts we discussed the three phases of bone healing and things that can slow down bone healing. In this post we will discuss methods to speed up bone healing if you sustain a fracture.

There are devices known as bone stimulators. In essence what they do is stimulate the bone in such a way that they change the local biology and encourage fast healing . In my practice we have used them successfully in fresh foot and ankle fractures as well as non unions of fractures.

There is the Exogen  and the Physio-stim and finally the CMF from DJ global.

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The Exogen uses a low intensity pulsed ultrasound technology that upregulates Cox 2 , VEGF and BMP 2,4,6 and 7. It is the only

exogen bone stimulator

This is an FDA approved bone stimulator for fresh (ones that just occurred) tibia and radius fractures, all the other ones are approved for non unions. Why would you want to wait till you get a non union to treat your fracture. Also it is applied for only 20 minutes a day. Patients love that. It has been shown to heal 86% of non unions and 81.6 percent of smokers with non unions that is important. Their studies show for foot metatarsal non unions a 92% healing success rate.

Next is Physio-stim made by orthofix  which works by a pulsed electromagnetic field PEMF, their advantage is that it can go over a cast they show 85% overall healing through their published registry data on their website. The Pulsed electromagnetic field encourages new blood cell formation which helps bring the cells for the new bone growth. Their studies show for foot metatarsal non unions a 90.9% healing success rate. Ther device needs to be worn 3 hours a day.

The CMF by DJ ortho  creates a low magnetic signal at the fracture site that stimulates new blood cells to bring new bone cells. It is to be worn for 30 minutes a day. No human studies demonstrate efficacy of CMF see  http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/778366_7

That is a review of the 3 major bone stimulators available today.