Non-displaced, no surgery needed, but even with PT 4 days a week, I cannot straighten this arm out. Wearing a dynamic brace at night in the extended position, doing all the home exercises, and just frustrated! I am a graphic designer and the arm is bent 9-10 hrs. a day at work, and I drive 2 or more hours a day, so anything you can offer–I’m listening!
Not the elbow, but using heating pads for my knee and shin really helped keep me mobile. (Ugly fib/tib break, skeleton stretch and titan plate, the whole shebang.) When I was at home or convenient, I’d wrap warm towelling around the joint for at least 10 minutes before moving. I’d also occasionally tape chemical heating pads behind my knee before going out and sleep with a hot water bottle to keep the joint from going stiff. But yeah, it still took a lot of time to regain full mobility and endurance - I work as a hotel clerk and standing upright for 8-9 hours a day almost killed me for the first three months.
- What does your Physiotherapeut (that what PT means, yes?) say about this? Will you just need more time until it becomes flexible? Should you shorten the stress during work time until it’s fully working again?
How long are the exercises you do each day compared to the limited position during work? If you exercise 30 min. each day, and then keep the arm locked in one position for 8 hours, I’m not surprised that the joint isn’t as flexible as doing exercises (spread out over the day) of 4 hours and only keep it locked in position for 1 hour, before taking a break and 15 min. of exercise again.
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What does your doctor say? Is there a chance of permanent damage limiting movability of the joint?
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How old are you, and how fit are you? The older and the less fit you were before, the longer it will take after the accident for your body to fully heal. Anecdote: when my mother broke her shoulder and was operated, and got PT with exercises, it wasn’t until about 1 full year afterwards that she had complete and full moveability of her shoulder as compared to the non-injured, or before.
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Related to that: how long ago was the accident?
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Have you been sleeping enough and eating good food (veggies, you know) to help healing, or are you eating Big Macs and getting by on 5 hours of sleep a night?
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[How long are the exercises you do each day compared to the limited position during work? If you exercise 30 min. each day, and then keep the arm locked in one position for 8 hours, I’m not surprised that the joint isn’t as flexible as doing exercises (spread out over the day) of 4 hours and only keep it locked in position for 1 hour, before taking a break and 15 min. of exercise again.
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thanks, good point, I need to set a timer to remind me to take breaks. Accident was in Sept. this year, and I am an impatient patient, and yes, I was told that at my age (58), I might not get full range of motion, and full “healing/results” could take as long as a year.
But many thanks for the idea of taking breaks to do the home therapy exercises at work, that take only about 10 min.
and apparently I don’t know how to do a “quote” 
Being impatient is good if it makes you push your limits a small bit each week, instead of accepting “limited range” after one month of PT. But it’s bad if you expect everything to be working perfectly 6 weeks later and get yourself frustrated.
I don’t know what exercises your PT showed you, but generally, motion and dexterity exercises don’t require a big warm-up. So try to integrate five repetitions of exercise 1 during breakfast, and 10 reps. of exercise 2 during the subway drive to work etc. Try to think of them not as exercises that have to be done, but as game or sports you would play, like learning juggling or whatever. (One exercise my mother had to improve her shoulder rotation angle was stand up to a wall or door and “walk” her hands up as high as she could reach. The more the better). Because the more often you do them, the better it will get.
I too had a radial head fracture a few years back (broke a chunk loose), only slightly displaced, no surgery. Research told me it often happens you can’t totally straighten your arm ever again no matter what and a doctor said that too. I also can’t turn my lower arm outward all the way anymore, either. Neither limitation has had a notable impact on my life. However, my elbow doesn’t like a cold breeze very much, or putting serious torque on it, as in using a screwdriver. But I am surviving nicely nonetheless.
Broken elbow can mean a lot of things and they all have a different prognosis. Was it just a fracture or was there a ligamentous injury as well? Did you fracture your radial neck? Radial head? Olecranon? Coranoid process? Distal humerus? What degree? Or was it a combination? How much preexisting degenerative disease was there in your elbow? How long after injury did you start ROM therapy? Are there any bony blocks or HO complicating matters? The stock answer here is talk to your doctor. There are way too many variables to make a meaningful prediction without intimate knowledge of your case.
However, that being said…
The elbow is an annoying joint when it comes to trauma because it’s highly congruent (it fits together relatively tightly compared to say, your shoulder, and any extra bits of scar or bone aren’t tolerated well), has a huge range of motion in both flexion/extension and pronation/supination, and gets stiff quickly. In someone your age, I would routinely expect a small but significant permanent loss of motion that no amount of physical therapy (or surgery, for that matter) will correct even in a minor, nondisplaced radial head fracture. You may see some modest improvement up to a year out but I wouldn’t expect anything too dramatic, particularly after 6 months post injury.
I messed my elbow up in a high school sporting accident. It was a messy injury, and I was in a dynamic splint for several months. 15 years later, I still don’t have 100% mobility, although you’d never notice by looking (unless you were a PT instructor screaming at me to perform full range of motion).
IME, it boils down to this - the injury to the bone is the easy part. The muscle, cartilage, and ligament damage is more important, and those can be worked out with persistence. At 58, you’re not likely to get back to having the abilities the 18 year old in you had, but you’ll be fully functional. September wasn’t long ago, after all.