Traction Splint - Principles

Principles

Traction splints are most commonly used for shaft fractures of the femur (or upper leg bone) and for fractures of the tibia and fibula. The femur is the longest bone in the body, the muscles surrounding the bone are also strong, when the bone is broken, the surrounding muscles often contract, pulling the bone ends past each other, causing additional injury and blood loss, pain, muscle, vascular and nerve damage.

Traction splints are applied only when the fracture is isolated to the femur and there are no other associated traumatic injuries to the leg or pelvis. Use of a traction splint while other fractures in the leg exist will cause the weaker fracture site to pull apart and not the targeted femur fracture.

Read more about this topic:  Traction Splint

Famous quotes containing the word principles:

    It is not impossible, of course, after such an administration as Roosevelt’s and after the change in method that I could not but adapt in view of my different way of looking at things, that questions should arise as to whether I should go back on the principles of the Roosevelt administration.... I have a government of limited power under a Constitution, and we have got to work out our problems on the basis of law. Now, if that is reactionary, then I am a reactionary.
    William Howard Taft (1857–1930)

    Now there cannot be first principles for men, unless the Divinity has revealed them; all the rest—beginning, middle, and end—is nothing but dreams and smoke.
    Michel de Montaigne (1533–1592)

    All those who write either explicitly or by insinuation against the dignity, freedom, and immortality of the human soul, may so far forth be justly said to unhinge the principles of morality, and destroy the means of making men reasonably virtuous.
    George Berkeley (1685–1753)