Hello all, I'm working on a new project and have some weird questions regarding broken bones & healing/pain. Suppose someone breaks both bones (ulna and radius) in their forearm. It's a clean, full break but non-displaced so no broken skin or anything like that. What happens if the break goes untreated? If the bones aren't set and immobilized, would they still eventually heal, though maybe not 100% correctly? How much pain would there be? Would the arm remain broken & pain present until it got treated? Those are the normal/easy questions. The next question, suppose a section of bone was completely removed. Like if a mad scientist took a 1" section of your femur right out of the middle. If you were immobilized, would the bone grow back? Would you be in pain just from the bone missing?
Every situation will depend upon the details, of course. If the two broken ends are close enough the bones will heal together. If they are not properly set they will heal at an angle. The pain may eventually ameliorate or disappear eventually, but there could be numerous consequences from the improperly set/healed bone.
My best friend growing up broke his arm in this manner but he was a super active kid who found his cast an inconvenience and pulled it off all the time. His arm healed crooked and now he's in his 40's and if he holds his arms out straight that one cocks off to the right in a really weird angle. It was funny when he decided to try archery because bow strings would snap the holy hell out of him. He finally gave up traditional archery and went to crossbows.
When i was a kid, my dad broke his finger. he insisted it was just sprained. But it was broken. He never got it treated and it healed crooked. Now, when he holds his hand up and his fingers flat, that one finger doesnt straighten and is kind of crooked to the side. It doesnt hurt him anymore, but the range of motion is limited (like i said, it doesnt straighten and it also doesnt bend all that well either in a closed fist). needless to say, when i broke my ankle and my dad said "it was just a sprain".... my mom made him take me to the ER to get the "sprain" stabilized. bones grow back.... but i dont know if a large section of bone that was removed would grow back. Say, a rib for example. thats just gone. I think age also plays a factor. kids are still growing and the younger they are, bones are still fusing together. Then you have people with abnormal bone and cartilage growth (i had to get the cartilage filed down in my knee because a part of it was growing too fast and abnormally and it was messing up my movement of that knee). hmmm.... this is something worth googling.... Excuse me while i explore that rabbit hole
I can answer the missing bone part....I managed to get a condition called thoracic outlet syndrome in my left shoulder. It basically filled my shoulder with scar tissue which pinched off the nerves and blood going into my left arm. To fix it the surgeons removed the scar tissue and my first rib to make room for further scar tissue build up. 1. The bone does not grow back. I have a squishy blank spot where my first rib used to be. 2. No it does not hurt, in the traditional sense. What does hurt are the nerve endings severed during surgery and muscles that were attached to the bone, those always give me pain, even when I am at rest. The pain increases with activity and exposure to cold. But the bone being missing does not hurt...bones are calcium with no nerves.
I can answer this with some authority. I broke both femurs in an auto accident. This was back in the 1960s when the technique for pinning bones was in its infancy. One break was so close to the knee that pinning wasn't possible, so they decided to immobilize the leg via traction, allowing the bone ends to overlap about 2 inches. And since I was in traction anyway, they did the same thing with the other leg, which had a break about midway between hip and knee. This also solved the potential problem of having one leg shorter than the other. Both legs healed the same way. Yes, it hurt. I don't know if it was from the bone being broken or the damage that was being done when the ends of the bone stabbed into the muscle every time I had a spasm in the muscle. I expect that the same thing would happen in your scenario unless there was a pin inserted into the bone to keep the ends together and aligned. FWIW, here's an X-ray of my right leg:
