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Has anyone here ever fractured your scaphoid?

If so, did you have it treated? How long after the injury? What was the treatment method? How long did it take to recover? Did you lose mobility?

I'm looking at having mine operated on but it sounds like I'll be out of commission for a long time and I'm just not sure if that's something I want to do.

Thanks for any info you can give!

I had an injury about 5 yrs ago where I probably fractured my scaphoid and due to the fact that it is an injury one can dimiss as a sprain I recieved no treatment other than buying a brace for my wrist. This year I cracked my radius and after three weeks finally went to the hand specialist at the hospital I work at. Now I'm probably looking at a screw and graft.

So what I've learned is that you are guarenteed osteoarthritis with significant decrease in range of motion. Typically onset of symptoms will occur 5-10 yrs after initial injury and surgery will simple put off this onset by an unknown time.

I'm assuming you currently have a cast on and the imagery has shown it to be unstable enough to warrent sugical fixation. The big issue with the scaphoid is that it has one tenuous artery that if compromised will lead to avascular necrosis where the scaphoid will deteriorate leading to the rest of the small bones of the wrist shifting around and eventuallly requiring a fusion of the bones.
Typically the surgical fixation of the scaphoid has an 80% success, that's including a graft, (hopefully you've not reached that point) while decreasing mobility by 20%. Meanwhile fusion will decrease ROM by 40%.

Healing wise your looking at 6-8 wks of not using your hand. It varies upon surgeon and your healing, but I'd say you'll be wanting to take it easy for at least a 8-12 months. And if you smoke quit now, that alone will promote increase circulation and thus healing to this already malnourished bone.

Scaphoid fractures used to leave a person with an essentially useless hand before the surgical techniques were developed to fix it. So find the best hand surgeon you can and get it fixed. Of course I say this while I am trying to avoid surgery myself but being down for so long will suck but in order to be playing for the next 20-30 years it is necessary.

Good luck and let me know how it goes as I will you if or when I have my work done.

Take care
Gabe

I sustained my injury a little over two years ago and, the same as you, I just put a brace on it. It felt fine after a while, but I would get sharp pains in my wrist doing seemingly mundane things.

Eventually this has led to chronic pain and occasionally severe pain trying to do simple things like tucking in my shirt or opening a jar of pickles.

I finally went to see a surgeon about it 2 or 3 weeks ago, got an MRI and was diagnosed with incomplete healing of a scaphoid fracture.

The hand surgeon I talked to said that the part of the bone that has broken off is too small for the standard pin and screw fix, so he wants to do a bone graft then put a few super small pins in there just to hold the graft in place.

After two months in a cast, he said he'd go back in and pull the pins out.

He's talking about two months in a cast, then a year or so of therapy to get the flexibility back into the wrist. There's a 20 percent chance the bone won't heal and he'll definately then have to go in and fuse the wrist.

My problems are that I don't want to be out of commission for the surgury and healing time (have jumping and SCUBA trips planned in the next 6 months) and I really, really don't want a fused wrist.

I'm really not sure if I want to go through with it.

That tiny little bone is really screwing with my plans here. Ugh!