Kevin Ware's Leg Fracture

Why Do Athletes Get So Many Injuiries?

Watching elite athletes perform on the playing field is meant to inspire. Like listening to a gifted musician or watching an actor on stage, live performance creates a bond between performer and fan. However, the stage rarely moves and there are no body checks or fouls at a symphony. Athletes have to prepare for the physical and mental challenges of competition, and they also need to overcome roadblocks placed by the opposition. It is the small movements, barely perceptible, that allow an athlete to stay balanced, shift a center of gravity, and adjust footing that prevents falls and injury. Muscles, tendons and ligaments stabilize the body and prevent potential injury and damage. Sometimes those mechanisms fail, and gravity and physics collide with the forces being placed on a leg or a joint and disaster occurs. A hush falls over the crowd, the cameras turn away, and medical people rush onto the court.

Kevin Ware, guard for the Louisville Cardinals, had jumped to block a shot thousands of times in practice and in games. Landing on one foot or two, twisting away or turning into an opponent was an instinctive act, not requiring thought, just body reaction. But in front of a packed house and millions more watching on television and the internet in 2013, Ware came down on one leg with just the right (or wrong) angle, torque, and amount of force that the leg gave way and the crowd hushed. The leg is not meant to bend at such an awkward angle and the bone is not meant to be pushed through the skin. Disaster had struck.

Ware was taken to the operating room quickly where they washed his leg out, and the decision made to repair the bones right away. Surgery is a symphony art and science coming together. The surgeon has to decide, is the bone is clean enough to put metal hardware in immediately or if the wound is still too dirty? Will he or she need a second operation planned to fix the bone?

The surgeons make final decision in the operating room, based on experience and the structural configuration of the injury. The stakes are high. If the plates, screw, rods, pins, and any other carpentry hardware used to put bones together becomes infected, most likely means all that infection has cleared, and entire repair process starts again.

The goal of any surgery is to return the player to the previous level of competition and function. Once Ware cleared the hurdles of the early post-operative period with the risk of infection, blood clots, and swelling, he had the challenge of rehabilitation. In the months following his injury, there were few crowds cheering, just quiet hours spent with physical therapists and on his own, getting back range of motion and power in the leg.

Kevin Ware ultimately healed and finished his college career with Georgia State, according to the Player's Tribune. Ware signed on with a professional team based in the Czech Republic in November, 2016, according to ESPN.

For the fans, it is another lesson learned. The thrill of victory is sometimes dampened by the agony of injury.

Even to the non-medical person, the injury looked devastating. To a trained medical professional, this type of injury signals potential problems and serious complications.

• Ware's skin had been torn and the bone was exposed to the outside world, which is not very clean and sterile, and bone is not meant to be exposed to the environment. The risk of a bone infection or osteomyelitis is a major complication. The best way to avoid infections is to be diligent about keeping the wound clean, taking all of the medicine Preventing that infection is paramount.
• The fracture was displaced. The bones were shifted out of alignment. The muscles, arteries, veins, and nerves are stretched running the risk of their damage and potential malfunction. Reducing the fracture quickly will decrease the tension of vital structures but that may be tough. Pulling the bone out to length is more than a little painful and the bone sticking through the skin can get stuck.
• Those muscles don't like being damaged and can gradually swell. In the lower leg, there are four compartments where the muscles are located, and should enough swelling occur, the pressure within can be high enough to cut off circulation...this potential disaster is called compartment syndrome.
• Just because an open fracture doesn't bleed, does not minimize the severity of the injury. In the case of Kevin Ware, the blood vessels are located behind the fracture and are not torn or damaged (the reason there was not a significant amount of blood seen with his injury). However, the blood vessels can stretch, kink, or clot, which causes blood supply beyond the break to be compromised.