Toe fracture

It’s three in the morning, and you need to go to the bathroom. You get up out of bed and didn’t bother turning in the lights. As you’re walking all groggy, “bam” a searing pain starts shooting through your toe. You stubbed your toe and Oh does that hurt, you think it’s nothing and the throbbing kicks in. You pop a Tylenol or motrin for the pain and after an hour you fall back asleep. Next morning you wake up and your toe is still sore. You’re about to put on your socks and notice it’s swollen and purple. Now you’re nervous ” did I break my toe” you ask yourself. You try putting on those nice shoes you were saving for today’s interview and the foot with the bum toe barely can fit into them. “Does that toe look crooked”  you wonder. You’re day ended up being a disaster, with the amount of pain you are in. You decide to make an appointment with a podiatrist to have it examined. You were lucky, that Dr. Wrotslavsky had an opening the next day at the Advanced Foot And Ankle Center Of San Diego. At your visit Dr. Philip Wrotslavsky examines the toe. Next you have an x ray and a toe fracture is confirmed as your diagnosis. This is a common occurrence. Many times the fracture is stable without deformity or dislocation. In those cases the simple solution is to tape the to the adjacent toe for a few weeks and it should heal fine. I do not suggest doing this without first having an x ray. I have a diabetics who thought they would do it themselves and ended up getting gangrene because they taped it to tight or they got an infection.

Last week,  Kaitlyn came to my office and she had the same incident as described above but in her case the tie was very crooked and she could not even get into a shoe. An x ray confirmed a fracture of the toe, but in her case the bone shifted into the wrong position and had an angular deformity.

fracture fifth toe

I went on to numb up the toe with some lidocaine. Once that took I use a technique called closed reduction, and put the toe back in the proper position. Most toe fractures will take six to ten weeks to heal. The swelling can stay also for that amount of time. One must be careful regarding exercising with a broken toe, as that can cause it to deviate out of position. I have seen many a crooked toe and hammertoe’s from improperly treated toe fractures.

So don’t leave your tie fracture to chance, make sure you see a board certified podiatrist to care for these injuries