Improving Bone Fracture Recovery via A Nanofibrous Scaffold

An in vivo approach

In about March of 2022, I broke my left femur and was rushed to the ER. The surgeon told me I was going to have an operation the next morning to fix the fracture. They were going to place a rod on the side to stabilize the two bones and from there, let the bone heal on its own. Post-surgery, they said the recovery time was looking like 2 weeks of limited movement, 1 month on crutches, 4 months before regular physical activity.

Now as an avid runner and athlete, this sucked. This long of a recovery time was devasting and sadly nothing was going to be able to speed it up. I just had to sit and wait. Luckily, I had youth on my side meaning my recovery was going to be a lot faster than most. And having gone through this lengthy process I realized there was an actual need to improve fracture healing because the recovery time puts too much of a hold on one’s life when there’s so much to do in the world.

Brief Overview of Fracture Healing

Let’s start the journey with a quick background in fracture healing. It all starts with an initial anabolic phase where local tissue volume increases through inflammation right after the fracture occurs — your body’s natural response.

A hematoma (blood clot) forms to act as a temporary scaffold for stem cell differentiation into fibrous tissue, cartilage, and bone. The giant blood clot will basically surround the fracture to…