Nonunion
permanent failure of healing following a broken bone
Nonunion is permanent failure of healing following a broken bone unless intervention (such as surgery) is performed. A fracture with nonunion generally forms a structural resemblance to a fibrous joint, and is therefore often called a "false joint" or pseudoarthrosis (from Greek pseudo-, meaning false, arthron, meaning joint, and -osis, meaning abnormal condition). The diagnosis is generally made when there is no healing between two sets of medical imaging, such as X-ray or CT scan. This is generally after 6–8 months.
Nonunion is a serious complication of a fracture and may occur when the fracture moves too much, has a poor blood supply or gets infected. Patients who smoke have a higher incidence of nonunion. The normal process of bone healing is interrupted or stalled.
Since the process of bone healing is quite variable, a nonunion may go on to heal without intervention in very few cases. In general, if a nonunion is still evident at 6 months post-injury it will remain unhealed without specific treatment, usually orthopedic surgery. A non-union which does go on to heal is called a delayed union.
The public source identifies “Nonunion” as permanent failure of healing following a broken bone. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Nonunion, permanent and failure.
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This entry incorporates text from “Nonunion” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.