Musculoskeletal

A broken bone is the easy part — the exam lives in the two emergencies that follow it: pressure that strangles the limb and marrow fat that reaches the lungs and brain.

Bone is broken down faster than it is replaced until the architecture itself gives way — and the patient finds out when something breaks under a load it should have carried.

An autoimmune synovitis that grows invasive tissue inside the joint and eats the bone at its margins — so the damage is permanent, and the treatment clock starts at diagnosis.

Not wear and tear. Osteoarthritis is failure of the entire joint, driven by enzymes the cartilage cells secrete themselves, and the strongest treatments in the guideline are exercise, weight loss and a cane rather than any drug.

A solubility problem that behaves like an infection — urate crystallises above a physical limit, a joint erupts overnight, and the disease keeps depositing crystals through every week the patient feels well.

Infection trapped inside bone — pus raises the pressure, cuts off the blood supply, and leaves dead bone that antibiotics cannot reach, which is why treatment is long and often surgical.

Almost everyone gets low back pain and almost all of it is mechanical and gets better on its own — the nurse’s job is to keep the patient moving and to catch the rare patient whose numb saddle area and failing bladder mean surgery within hours.

Most leg amputations follow diabetes and peripheral arterial disease; the surgery aims for a healed, cone-shaped residual limb that can carry a prosthesis, and the nursing work — bleeding and wound checks, positioning against contracture, treating phantom pain as real, shaping the limb and supporting grief — decides how well the person walks again.

A chronic disorder of pain regulation in the central nervous system: the brain and spinal cord amplify pain signals, so widespread pain lasting 3 months or more comes with fatigue, unrefreshing sleep and "fibro fog." Labs are normal and diagnosis is clinical. Exercise, CBT and sleep habits come first; duloxetine, milnacipran and pregabalin are FDA-labeled for it, and opioids and NSAIDs are not recommended.