It’s not an issue, and pretty easily as it’s not a major weight bearing structure. It mostly functions as an attachment point for various muscles and as A part of the articulation of the ankle joint. Part of it is commonly harvested for use as a bone graft.
The most commonly harvested area starts right at the top of where the missing section begins, so I suspect this post may be bullshit.
To be clear, othopedics is not my area of expertise,
edit - ortho specialty chimed in. Sounds like it’s responsible for much less than I understood - see the next comment in the chain.
so grain of salt, but to my understanding, it’s basically the radius bone, but of the leg. Aim your toes forward in the normal anatomical position; now rotate your entire foot to the left or right. That’s your fibula working. Without it, very limited rotation; but otherwise you can still walk and function mostly normally, just a bit impaired.
I have no idea how ‘chunk missing in the middle’ plays into that. Guessing you’d still have some rotation, but without a secure anchor point, it wouldn’t be great.
Aim your toes forward in the normal anatomical position; now rotate your entire foot to the left or right. That’s your fibula working. Without it, very limited rotation; but otherwise you can still walk and function mostly normally, just a bit impaired
Eh… I do specialize in orthopedics and rehabilitation. You can still do all these things without a fully functional fibula, just to a reduced degree. The fibula only contributes to a few degrees of range of motion in the lower limb, we are talking about millimeters. It can be noticeable given enough time or a high enough level of vigorous activity. Most people would live a fairly active lifestyle without noticing this kind of damage to the fibula.
It can be noticeable given enough time or a high enough level of vigorous activity.
So are we talking this would impact you if you’re an elite athlete, but not an advanced amateur? Or is it more that it’ll impact sports where changing direction quickly matters (like any football or court sport) but not more steady ones (like cycling or running)?
You’d probably notice it more if you were doing sports with a lot of lateral movements, pivoting, and changing direction. Not so much with something like cycling. You might notice over time it if you were doing something like marathons as it does help absorb some ground force reaction on heel strike.
I’m imagining sports would be a lot more brutal if once a player got injured, they send out “the vet” onto the field to destroy them if they got any broken fingers or toes.
Is that like non-functional doomed, or like we can’t use them for sport any more so we opt to kill them doomed? I’ve heard the spiel about horses breaking a leg before, but I’m not actually sure what it’s supposed to imply.
It’s doomed as in they’ll die with most bad leg injuries. Horses cant support themselves on 3 legs. They’re just too big. There was a foal with 3 legs that lived for a couple years and made its round on social media, but it was eventually put down because it just grew too large. Poor thing should have been put down immediately because the life it lived was of terrible quality despite getting specialized care.
I’ve seen a few horses get put down for a bad leg injury. Almost had to put down my childhood mare after she fucked up her leg in a fence. She made a full recovery, but it took almost a year for it to heal. Her leg got caught in the wire fence and it got shredded to the bone. It was awful, but she was able to stand on it enough to keep herself upright and all that, so we decided to try to get it healed and were miraculously successful
Is it not a problem to have part of your fibula missing? Can you operate without it?
You’re fine until the Bluetooth disconnects.
The comments on this thread are gold 😂💜
It’s not an issue, and pretty easily as it’s not a major weight bearing structure. It mostly functions as an attachment point for various muscles and as A part of the articulation of the ankle joint. Part of it is commonly harvested for use as a bone graft.
The most commonly harvested area starts right at the top of where the missing section begins, so I suspect this post may be bullshit.
To be clear, othopedics is not my area of expertise,
edit - ortho specialty chimed in. Sounds like it’s responsible for much less than I understood - see the next comment in the chain.
so grain of salt, but to my understanding, it’s basically the radius bone, but of the leg. Aim your toes forward in the normal anatomical position; now rotate your entire foot to the left or right. That’s your fibula working. Without it, very limited rotation; but otherwise you can still walk and function mostly normally, just a bit impaired.I have no idea how ‘chunk missing in the middle’ plays into that. Guessing you’d still have some rotation, but without a secure anchor point, it wouldn’t be great.Eh… I do specialize in orthopedics and rehabilitation. You can still do all these things without a fully functional fibula, just to a reduced degree. The fibula only contributes to a few degrees of range of motion in the lower limb, we are talking about millimeters. It can be noticeable given enough time or a high enough level of vigorous activity. Most people would live a fairly active lifestyle without noticing this kind of damage to the fibula.
So are we talking this would impact you if you’re an elite athlete, but not an advanced amateur? Or is it more that it’ll impact sports where changing direction quickly matters (like any football or court sport) but not more steady ones (like cycling or running)?
You’d probably notice it more if you were doing sports with a lot of lateral movements, pivoting, and changing direction. Not so much with something like cycling. You might notice over time it if you were doing something like marathons as it does help absorb some ground force reaction on heel strike.
Fascinating. Thanks for sharing!
I don’t think we’d have lasted long as a species without a little bit of “redundancy”.
I don’t know horses get pretty screwed when they break a leg even with the best medical technology at the owners disposal.
To be fair to horses, their legs are fingers, which doesn’t help the problem.
I’m imagining sports would be a lot more brutal if once a player got injured, they send out “the vet” onto the field to destroy them if they got any broken fingers or toes.
Is that like non-functional doomed, or like we can’t use them for sport any more so we opt to kill them doomed? I’ve heard the spiel about horses breaking a leg before, but I’m not actually sure what it’s supposed to imply.
It’s doomed as in they’ll die with most bad leg injuries. Horses cant support themselves on 3 legs. They’re just too big. There was a foal with 3 legs that lived for a couple years and made its round on social media, but it was eventually put down because it just grew too large. Poor thing should have been put down immediately because the life it lived was of terrible quality despite getting specialized care.
I’ve seen a few horses get put down for a bad leg injury. Almost had to put down my childhood mare after she fucked up her leg in a fence. She made a full recovery, but it took almost a year for it to heal. Her leg got caught in the wire fence and it got shredded to the bone. It was awful, but she was able to stand on it enough to keep herself upright and all that, so we decided to try to get it healed and were miraculously successful