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Orthopedist

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Fracture of wrist bones: causes, symptoms, diagnosis, treatment

Alexey Kryvenko, medical expert
Last reviewed: 04.07.2025

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ICD-10 code

S62. Fracture at the level of the wrist and hand.

Epidemiology of wrist fractures

Wrist bone fractures account for 1% of all fractures of the rest of the skeleton. The scaphoid bone is most often affected, then the lunate bone, and much less often all other wrist bones.

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What causes a broken wrist bone?

Fractures can occur as a result of direct and indirect mechanisms of injury, but indirect mechanisms of injury are more common.

Due to the presence of a large number of low-mobility joints, reinforced from the back and palm by tightly stretched ligaments (carpometacarpal, dorsal and palmar), as well as due to the arrangement of bones in the form of an arch convex to the back, conditions for good shock absorption are created. This explains the extremely rare trauma of the triquetral, pisiform, hamate, capitate, large and small trapezoid bones, especially with an indirect mechanism of injury.

Symptoms of a Wrist Fracture

Symptoms of fractures are scanty: swelling of the hand, local pain, positive axial load symptom (pressure along the axis of the finger or metacarpal bone).

Diagnosis of wrist fracture

Due to the small size of the bones, it is almost impossible to make a definitive diagnosis without an X-ray.

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Treatment of wrist fracture

After anesthesia of the fracture site, a plaster splint is applied for 5-6 weeks. After a course of rehabilitation treatment, you can return to work no earlier than 8-10 weeks after the injury.