The reaction from fellow Louisville basketball players spoke volumes about the gruesome nature of Kevin Ware’s leg injury. During an NCAA play-off round, he snapped his right leg in two. A bad break for the ballplayer.
“I sympathize with him and his players, but I think this is an injury he can bounce back from,” says Dr. James Bynum, orthopedic sports medicine physician on Lee Memorial Health System’s medical staff.
Ware suffered a compound fracture. Rare in basketball, it’s more common in other sports.
“It can occur from a direct blow like a football player getting tackled or soccer players cross kicking or it can happen from torsion, from implanting a foot and twisting it awkwardly,” says Dr. Bynum.
A compound fracture is also called an open fracture because the broken bone is exposed to outside air. That increases the chance for infection.
“We consider a fracture open if it even makes the tiniest little poke hole. Because that means it’s seen the bacteria in the air, which could lead to infection. But the bigger the wound is, the more trauma there is to the exposed bone, the more chance there is for complications such as infection or poor healing,” says Dr. Bynum.
As sports injuries go, the recovery is quicker than ones involving muscles or tendons.
“It takes at least 6-12 weeks for the bone to heal. He’ll probably have as quick or faster recovery than say if it was his ACL or other ligaments in his knees, because these fractures tend to heal pretty reliably,” says Dr. Bynum.
Compound fractures generally require surgery to clean the site and stabilize the bone.
“We have our techniques to hold it back in place while we fit this rod down the center of the bone. Once that’s through the fracture, everything pretty much locks in place,” says Dr. Bynum.
As bad as these breaks look, they shouldn’t shatter an athlete’s future.