Photography: The Arthrex Plate

The day before Thanksgiving of 2021 I broke my wrist in a stupid low-speed mountain bike crash. Didn’t really hurt, but it did a number on the radius bone. Some days later I went in for surgery and had an Arthrex Dorsal Distal Radius Plate installed. A year later the bone was healed, but the plate was giving me increasing discomfort, so back under the knife I went to have it taken out.

While going through the process I learned that modern bone plates generally use screws that are threaded on the head, so that they attach firmly to both the plate and the bone, this is called a locking plate. This provides more stability, and keeps a bit of distance between the plate & bone, allowing for fewer complications. This paper illustrates it very will using an apple.

The plate iself is a little marvel of precision medical manufacturing, and a good photographic subject. These days I wear it on a necklace (minus the screws) – makes for a nice conversation starter.