A broken arm can be a common injury, but one local woman landed herself in a unique situation after she broke two bones in her arm at the same time.
Jan Hinton is around six months post-surgery on her arm.
“Everything went well and I’m glad I can move it,” said Hinton.
After surgery and physical therapy, she’s thankful to have function back in her arm after a fall last year.
“Landed on my elbow and shattered it and broke a bone in there too,” said Hinton.
“Jan presented with complex injury of her elbow, she had kind of a two for one injury because she had an olecranon fracture, which is the posterior part of the elbow that was broken, and then in addition to that she also had a distal humorous fracture, which is a little bit rarer and more severe and we often see those injuries separately but not often together,” said Avera orthopedic surgeon, Razvan Nicolescu, MD.
Surgery to Fix Fractures
While the fractures themselves are not necessarily uncommon, it is a bit more unique to have them both at the same time. Surgery was necessary to fix her arm.
“I’ve never broken anything before, so it was a little scary, but everybody was so great at keeping me calm,” said Hinton.
“The olecranon fracture, those are usually straightforward, they’re pretty superficial so just a posterior approach to the elbow and there are several ways we can fix those but in this case I chose to use a plate and screw construct to fix that,” said Nicolescu. “The distal humerus fracture is more complex because we have to extend the incision quite a bit and then we have to get the triceps out of the way.”
Dr. Nicolescu had to then replace and reconstruct her distal humerus with an implant.
“Which is another part that adds a layer of complexity because that surgery is rarer than fixing the fracture with plate and screws,” said Nicolescu.
Recovering After Surgery
Jan still has some limited motion given the severity of her injury, but she can hold her grandchildren again, which one of her goals post-surgery.
“I can lift them up and hold them, and they can hug me, that’s all that counts,” said Hinton.
“She’s still improving, obviously the acute phase is behind her and she’s done a lot of the work already, but I would say it’s about a year until it’s all kind of done changing and improving,” said Nicolescu.
Learn more about Avera Orthopedics.
