OrthoGeorgia Sports Medicine Surgeon Dr. Zaneb Yaseen, MD Discusses Clavicle Fractures

In this video and the transcription below, you’ll learn more about clavicle fractures from orthopedic sports medicine specialist Dr. Zaneb Yaseen. If you have symptoms of this common injury, we encourage you to contact us today.

What is a Clavicle Fracture?

I am Dr. Zaneb Yaseen. I’m a sports medicine physician that works for OrthoGeorgia. I want to talk about clavicle fractures. Clavicle fractures are very common. They happen often, especially with sports or motor vehicle accidents or falls. What happens is, the force when you land on the side or get hit on the side passes through the shoulder and you can break the clavicle. The clavicle is this bone in the front, the collar bone. The vast majority of fractures happen sort of in the middle, but sometimes they happen more toward the end – toward the shoulder and very rarely can they happen on the inside. 

Treatment Options for Clavicle Fractures

Most of these fractures, depending on how they look on an X-ray, can be treated either with surgery or without surgery. A lot of the time if they’re pretty well lined up, we can often treat these with a sling and it takes about 6 to 8 weeks for the bones to heal and you can get better. When the fractures are more complicated (when the bones are further apart or there are multiple fragments) sometimes this requires surgery, which we try to do within the first one to two weeks. What we do is often use a plate or screws on top of the clavicle or in front of the clavicle and that holds it in place. Usually you feel better pretty quickly but it still takes 6 to 8 weeks for the bones to heal. These are very common injuries and there are a lot of different ways to treat them, based on your X-rays, who you are as a person, and what kind of medical issues you have. We are more than happy to take care of you at OrthoGeorgia. Please feel free to give us a call if you have a clavicle fracture.

Orthopedic Fracture Care in Central GA at OrthoGeorgia

At OrthoGeorgia, we are proud to offer our patients convenient access to personalized orthopedic care, close to home. Your doctor will take the time to get to know you and accurately diagnose your fracture or injury before creating a treatment plan with your unique needs in mind. We want to help you get back to doing what you love – to get started with OrthoGeorgia, please contact the office location nearest you today!