Brooks Lopez, the starting center for the New Jersey Nets, broke a bone in his foot and is having surgery to repair it today. He is expected to be out six weeks. The bone he broke is the fifth metatarsal and is located on the outside of the foot.
This is probably one of the most common foot fractures. It usually occurs when your foot rolls over. There is a tendon, called the peroneal brevis tendon that is under tension when you twist your ankle. This causes the tendon to pull on the bone and break a piece off. Sometimes, the piece is broken off in such a way that it needs to be put back surgically. Other times, the bone breaks but is not displaced, meaning it is a stable fracture and can be healed just by applying a cast.
There are three types of fractures in this location. The base of the fifth metatarsal fracture is called an avulsion fracture. This is because the tendon yanks or avulses the bone. This fracture is usally stable enough to be treated conservatively without surgery.
A second type is a stress fracture, which is not a through and through break and not displaced. They occur usually in young athletes that put a lot of strain on the bone, thus stressing the area.
The Jones fracture is located above the base (see above diagram) and is associated with poor healing. This fracture usually requires surgery and then non-weight bearing in a cast for six weeks. Surgery consists of putting in a screw to put the fracture back. We use intra-operative x-rays to make sure the screw and bone is in proper placement. The Jones fracture is in the area of good blood supply to this bone, thus, the nutrition to the bone is disrupted in this instance. This is the reason for the poor healing, unless it is surgically corrected.
However, in basketball players, or any athlete that is required to jump or pound on their foot for their sport, the best option is to surgically repair it just by using a screw. It takes about 6 weeks for the bone to heal and afterwards, Lopez will need to get back into playing shape. So, don’t expect him to be playing for about two months which is now almost the whole season, due to the shortened schedule.
