What You Need to Know About Calcaneal Fractures

Calcaneal fractures are fractures or breaks of the heel bone.  They can be very painful and lead to problems longterm, especially if joint surfaces are fractured.  The most common way we see these occur is falls from a height, such as falling off of a ladder or falling off of a roof.

If you have a joint depression type fracture, we typically get a CT scan to evaluated the subtalar joint.  If the joint surfaces are not aligned correctly, we normally recommend surgically realigning the joint with a plate and screws.  There are some newer minimally invasive techniques that can help minimize some of the complications we see with the larger open incisions.

Another calcaneal fracture that happens frequently is an anterior process fracture.  These typically happen with inversion ankle injuries when a strong ligament pulls off the piece of bone.  If they are large enough fractures that extend in the calcaneal cuboid joint, we sometimes treat them with screw placement or with excising the piece of bone if it becomes more chronically painful.

The last type of calcaneal fracture that occurs is a posterior avulsion fracture where the achilles tendon pulls off a piece of the heel bone.  We see mid-substance achilles tendon ruptures more commonly than these type of fractures, but if they do occur, we typically recommend surgically repairing these to try and give the best longterm functional outcome possible.

If you have any foot or ankle pain, it is not normal and should be evaluated by a podiatrist/ foot and ankle surgeon as soon as possible.  Call us at 719-488-4664, so our Colorado Springs podiatrists can help you today!

Author

Dr. Matthew Hinderland Board Certified Podiatrist and Foot and Ankle Surgeon