The Fascinating Process of How Broken Bones Heal

A holistic TED-Ed lesson, written by Gurpreet Baht and Natalie Pang and directed by Oz Animation, explains how bones get broken and the biological process by which they heal.

Dig into the body’s biological process that heals a broken bone, and find out how different kinds of fractures are mended.

They first differentiate bone sizes, noting that the longer ones tend to break more easily as they often receive the brunt of most injuries.

The human body’s 206 bones come in many shapes and sizes: short bones, long bones, flat bones, irregular bones. Roughly 50% of people will break a bone at some point in their lives

The lesson further explains the fascinating process of bone healing over the course of several stages. This includes the injury-removing inflammatory phase, the release of chondrocytes to repair cartilage, and the the conversion to osteoblasts which create a bony callous that turns into new bone growth. The concern about this healing process, however, is how clean the break actually is.

The healing timeline varies widely depending on a patient’s diet, how much rest they’re getting, and how messy the break is. A clean break generally heals the fastest, and doctors use casts and splints to keep bones aligned as they heal.But if the bone has been splintered into tiny fragments and significantly displaced, surgery may be required to put those pieces back in place.