Word: orthopedist
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Dates: during 2010-2019
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...wrist in question belonged to Carol, a super-busy young mom, married to Peter, one of my best buds from college. Late-spawning academic types, they live in a city of world-famous hospitals. The picture with the e-mail was a familiar x-ray to every orthopedist. Carol's wrist was sporting a nasty fracture of the distal radius - the larger of the two long bones in the forearm, just at the joint. The bone was in a few pieces (the fracture was "comminuted"), and it broke into the joint (it was "intra-articular") but none of the pieces...
...pieces into the best position possible, then we held the wrist still in a plaster cast for a month and a half - 40 days and 40 nights being the magic healing time for most things orthopedic. Done well (and soon) closed reduction works quite well; an experienced orthopedist with good hands can take some horrible-looking fractures and usually end up with a good-looking x-ray, a painless wrist and close-to-perfect function. If you're older than 40 you know this from personal experience; this fracture is so common (they represent a fifth of all fractures seen...
...begin, the very worst outcomes I personally have seen with these fractures have been with the operated ones. I reminded Peter that my father, an orthopedist himself whom Peter knows well, had this fracture, and he treated it closed. I reminded him that closed treatment was not perfect - but neither were the results with surgery. I would expect Carol's wrist to be somewhat stiff and occasionally achy either way. A scientist could appreciate that there is ultimately very little pure data here. Surgery would be my choice if and only if the doctor couldn't get (and hold) good...