July 1, 2024

Gabrielle Guzman 

10th Grade

Columbia Grammar Preparatory School

Doctors in the United States treat over 6.8 million bone injuries annually. These injuries are most common in children and the elderly, leading to an average of two bone injuries in a person’s lifetime. Most of these injuries can be treated by wearing a cast for a few weeks or months. However, there are some cases where the bone, specifically one that is part of a limb, can not undergo that kind of treatment, and instead needs the bone to grow in order to heal. This resulted in the creation of circular fixators by Soviet doctor G.A Ilizarov. His treatment, also known as the Ilizarov method, was based on the natural healing process for human bones. The body’s reparative stage is amazingly structured and capable of holding the blood clots formed over broken parts of a bone together to begin healing within two weeks of an injury. Ilizarov would take advantage of this by separating the two damaged bone halves by two to three millimeters. This would result in the body instead of joining back together, to generate a new bone to fill in the gap between the halves fixing the damage by correcting the deformity due to the previous damage. 

While the Ilizarov method is still put into use today, there have been multiple developments in treating severe bone fractures. For example, there is the Taylor Spatial Frame, an external fixator to treat bone fractures, created by Charles Taylor in 1994. This treatment involves using carbon fiber or aluminum as rings outside the leg, held together by struts, to hold them together between the skin and the damaged bone. This fixator can correct the bone within weeks, a huge progression to past healing times for bones. Following those weeks, the person with this external fixator may have to keep this medical device on their damaged bone whether it be in their arm, leg, or hand, to make a successful recovery. Moreover, there is even an internal fixator now which was formally designed around the time of the 20th century by Arbuthnot Lane and Albin Lambotte. Today, this medical device serves the same purpose as the aforementioned fixators, but with much more advanced technology which does not need any rings held outside the bone, but rather a rod attached to the bone. Then, a machine can be used to slowly grow the bones bit by bit, so the bone can react and fill up the gaps created. Both external and internal fixators are both used in medical practice today, although internal fixators are more commonly used for longer bones such as legs. 

Overall, technological development in medicine has come a long way. All these versions of osteosynthesis of fixations of the bone have greatly benefited patients’ lives. They are able to prevent the use of amputations in the limbs where a bone may appear far too damaged and allow people to get back to more comfortable lives after treatment. Though there are no known current developments in these treatments, we can only hope that they become more accessible to different parts of the world and more efficient than ever.