New Breaks in collaborna

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
(Free-Press-Release.com) February 27, 2012 -- New Breaks in Collarbone
Monday, August 1st, 2011
I came accross a good review of clavicle fractures. As cyclists we all know that sooner or later we are going to fall off of our bikes be it training or racing. Giving this inevitable fact chances are that you or someone that you know has been sidelined with a clavicle (collarbone) fracture as a result. When we look at fractures as a whole in cyclists, the collarbone is the most frequent bone to be broken.

This year’s crash-marred Tour de France is a good case in point with the high number of abandoned riders with clavicle fractures and gives us a good opportunity to take a closer look at this injury that plagues the peloton.
The anatomy
The clavicle is an S-shaped long bone that acts as a strut to attach the shoulder to the axial skeleton. Its most anterior apex attaches to the sternum via the sterno-clavicular joint and at the posterior apex it broadens and flattens to attach to the acromion via the acromio-clavicular joint. The bone acts as an attachment point of several muscles such as the sternocleidomastoid, pectoralis major, and the sternohyoid muscles medially and on the lateral side the anterior deltoid, trapezius and the pectoralis major’s clavicular head.

With respect to characterizing clavicle fractures we tend to divide the bone into thirds with a medial, middle and lateral portions.
Fracture to the medial third of the clavicle are rare and make up less than 3 percent of breaks, while the lateral third is the second most frequently involved portion and accounts for 15-30 percent of all fractures.
The middle third of the clavicle is the narrowest section of the bone and lacks the muscular and ligamentous attachment of the ends. These facts when taken together are thought to make it more susceptible to injury and it is indeed the most frequent site of fracture (70-80 percent of all clavicle fractures).

Displacement is a term that means the bony ends of a fracture do not align and these mid-shaft fractures tend to have high rate of displacement with an incidence found to be between 48-73 percent. This high rate is likely related to the muscular attachments at the ends of the clavicle pulling the fracture fragments of bone away from their normal anatomic alignment, along with the actual weight of the upper extremity itself contributing to this distraction in some cases.

orthopedic doctors