The clavicle is essentially a strut that connects your chest to your shoulder occasionally the
clavicle can be broken or fractured when an individual suffers a traumatic injury or a
fall on the shoulder if the two ends of the bone are completely displaced or not connected it does
often times require fixation or reconstruction for clavicle fractures these tend to be more
of acute injuries and surgery can be somewhat urgent once the surgery is scheduled the pre
missing testing Department will tend to reach out to patients quickly to discuss the procedure and
answer any questions we contact the patient to schedule a phone interview with one of our nurses
the interview takes about 20 minutes depending on the extent of the patient's medical history
we ask a series of questions and then we set up any pre-admission testing that needs to be done
before the surgery our job is give patients the adequate and appropriate amount of information to
understand exactly what's going to happen that day so if the pre-admission testing team is an
excellent support staff that we are fortunate to have at Northwestern the patient is called
the night before to be notified what time their surgery is and what time they need to arrive at
the hospital a patient having clavicle surgery will wear something loose preferably button-up
to put on easily after surgery on the day of the surgery the patient checks in at the front counter
it meets the staff there the patient will be seen by the surgeon who will be performing
the surgery will discuss the procedure as well as confirm that the informed consent form that
the patient will sign matches with the correct extremity after this the anesthesiologist will
discuss choices and options for anesthesia every patient that comes in for surgery will ultimately
meet a physician anesthesiologist who will ask a series of questions regarding your medical history
then ultimately create an anaesthetic Planet's tailor to you bearing in mind what your medical
conditions are and your prior antek experiences in the operating room usually there are three or
four people first there is the anesthesiologist second there's myself and oftentimes my physician
assistant there will be a scrub nurse whose job is to pass instruments to myself and my physician
assistant during the operation clavicle fracture surgery entails taking the two ends of the bone
putting them together and holding them with a plate and screws we do these through a small
incision as possible on the top of the clavicle afterwards the incision is closed with minimally
invasive techniques oftentimes with the nylon suture patients wake up in the operating room
a lot of times because of the anesthetic they won't remember that the patient is transported
from the surgical suite to the recovery room at which time a surgical post-operative nurse will
take care of them patients can expect to go home one to two hours after surgery after clavicle
surgery patients may remove their dressing after two days they should apply a band-aid or dressing
over the incision to keep it dry until they are seen at their first post-op appointment
shoulder patients will be restricted to one arm after surgery for a while so may need help with
chores and food preparation immediately after surgery it's important to get things set up at
home it's important to have family members help if possible thinking about these things before
the operation will typically make the surgical experience a lot better after clavicle surgery
patients are allowed to drive once they are off of pain medication and feel safe they are
required to remove their sling and rest their arm comfortably at their side the first month
patients will do their own exercise at home flexing extending their elbow doing some gentle
pendulum exercises with their shoulder and then at about five weeks we'll start outpatient physical
therapy the goal for the clavicle procedure for physical therapy is to try to get that range of
motion back but more importantly trying to get it to be relatively pain-free then we move on working
more on posture so that shoulder doesn't round forward and then working into strengthening to
return to prior level of functioning typically the clavicle heals somewhere between week eight
or week 12 post-op early and once the bone is healed the patient can return to their normal
functionality thankfully we have a lot of great clinicians at Northwestern and I feel passionate
about working here we are on the cutting edge in the forefront of orthoscopic and jaw
replacement surgery at Northwestern when you come to Northwestern you should feel comfortable in the
fact that you're receiving the most innovative cutting edge procedure that is available