Education, especially awareness is very important.

Let me tell you an incident of what happened at our hospital during orthopedics posting.

A woman, 56 maybe, fractured her tibia ( leg bone) while climbing trees. She fell and landed on a hard surface causing this accident.

Being in immense pain, she decided to treat it at HOME. A fractured tibia treated at home…

Anyways, she did some kind of paste, massaged it with hot oil and what not. The pain didn't go (obviously, that's not even surprising).

So she visited some local quack, who gave her some kind of cream (probably steroidal cream) and few tablets of betamethasone( once again, a steroid). That quack knew that steroids have a good effect on pain, but little did he know that steroids kill the immune system, and if the patient is diabetic, then God save her!! She is going to develop serious infection.

Which is what exactly happened..

The pain subsided, but.. She developed high fever and a dirty abscess over that area(we call it acute osteomyelitis) , sign of sepsis turning to septic shock.

The day she was admitted, she had a fever of 104 degrees, which wasn't coming down even after repeated acetaminophens.

The TLC was 35000 ( normal is 4000–11000)

She was passing no urine, sign of kidney failure ( sure sign of septic shock).

It looked something like this.

Became delirious after few hours and breathless too. Had to intubate her.

Our orthopedician decided, that only amputating the leg can save her after she became a bit stable ( performing such big surgeries when the patient is in such bad condition is wayyy to risky)

Sadly she passed away that night only.

Cause if death :- sepsis with septic shock, dyselectrolytemia and Acute kidney injury.

It's was surprising for us, as how can someone die of just a fractured tibia.. That too a closed fracture.

Now, obviously people are going to comment that she couldn't afford going to hospital where X Ray costs 1000 and doctors visit is 2000.

Now let me tell you this.

The thing is, the PHC ( primary health center) was just 15 mins away from her home, and there, everything is done for FREE. A PHC treats these cases for free. Even they would have referred the patient to the nearby Govt Hospital for operation.

She could have gotten better if she knew not to trust quacks. She could have gotten better, only if she was aware of the facilities she could avail. She could have survived if she went to the free PHC.

Someone dying of a fracture is very rare and should never have happened.

That is why, awareness and education is necessary..!!

-Pallab Roy Chowdhury