How to take Care of your Plaster Cast

A Plaster Cast is a rigid support to hold your broken bones together so that they heal true. After straightening the broken bone it is applied over a cotton bandage using a damp roll of mesh impregnated with plaster-of-paris which is spun around your bone like a roll of toilet paper around your arm. As the water evaporates the cast gets very warm and hard. The cotton underneath protects your skin from the heat and from rubbing off against the rocky cast. By the next day your cast has cured and is a strong support for your bone.

Things to Do in a Cast:

• Keep your affected limb propped up on a pillow when resting to avoid swelling.
• Exercise any joints sticking out from the plaster e.g. your toes or fingers, to prevent stiffness.
  

Go back to have your Plaster Cast checked if:

1. If it gets soft or cracks.
2. You develop increasing pain, numbness, or pins and needles or your toes or fingers turn blue. These are signs of your cast being too tight, cutting off blood flow. Not good!
3. Your cast stinks. Pew. This can be a sign of infection.

And remember to keep all recheck appointments!

Do NOT:

• Wet your cast. This will crack it and a new one will need to applied.
• Cut your plaster cast yourself - go back to have it trimmed or loosened if needed. Doctors use a non sharp saw like a vibrating pizza cutter to cut casts without cutting your skin. Never use a box cutter, power saw, or razor or you'll cut yourself!
• Stand on it, or rest on any hard surfaces like the back of a chair for the first day as the plaster needs time to set full strength.

DoctorSecrets! "X-rays CAN see through a plastic cast so you don't have to take them off for an x-ray position recheck".

Itchy Cast Remedy

 

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