Mayo Clinic Health Manager
Get free personalized health guidance for you and your family.
Get Started
About our e-newsletters
- Free e-newsletters
- Mayo Clinic expertise
- We do not share your e-mail address
Housecall, our weekly general-interest e-newsletter, keeps you up to date on a wide variety of health topics with timely, reliable, practical information, recipes, blogs, questions and answers with Mayo Clinic experts and more. Our biweekly topic-specific e-newsletters also include blogs, questions and answers with Mayo Clinic experts, and other useful information that will help you manage your health.
Housecall Archives
Mayo Clinic Housecall
Stay up to date on the latest health information.
What you get
- Free weekly e-newsletter
- Mayo Clinic expertise
- Recipes, tools and other helpful information
- We do not share your e-mail address
Treatments and drugs
By Mayo Clinic staff
Medications
The pain associated with simple toe fractures typically can be relieved with over-the-counter medications such as ibuprofen (Advil, Motrin, others), naproxen sodium (Aleve) or acetaminophen (Tylenol, others). Stronger painkillers can be prescribed if the pain from your fracture is more severe.
Reduction
If the broken fragments of your bone don't fit snugly together, your doctor may need to manipulate the pieces back into their proper positions — a process called reduction. In most cases, this can be accomplished without cutting open your skin. Ice or injected anesthesia is used to numb your toe.
Immobilization
To heal, a broken bone must be immobilized so that its ends can knit back together. Examples include:
- Buddy taping. If you have a simple fracture in any of your smaller toes, your doctor may simply tape the injured toe to its neighboring toe. The uninjured toe acts like a splint. Always put some gauze or felt in between toes before taping them together, to prevent skin irritation.
- Wearing a stiff-bottomed shoe. Your doctor might prescribe a post-surgical shoe that has a stiff bottom and a soft top that closes with Velcro. This can prevent your toe from flexing and provide more room to accommodate the swelling.
- Casting. If the fragments of your broken toe won't stay snugly together, you may need a walking cast.
Surgery
In some cases, a surgeon may need to use pins, plates or screws to maintain proper position of your bones during healing.
- Gravlee JR, et al. Toe fractures. http://www.uptodate.com/home/index.html. Accessed Aug. 20, 2009.
- Foot: Phalangeal fractures. In: Marx JA, et al. Rosen's Emergency Medicine: Concepts and Clinical Practice. 6th ed. Philadelphia, Pa.: Mosby Elsevier; 2006. http://www.mdconsult.com/das/book/body/155303268-3/877392025/1365/151.html#4-u1.0-B0-323-02845-4..50060-3--cesec110_2641. Accessed Aug. 20, 2009.
- Toe and forefoot fractures. American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons. http://orthoinfo.aaos.org/topic.cfm?topic=A00165. Accessed Aug. 20, 2009.
