Study: Surgery Doesn't Change RTW Time in Broken-Collarbone Cases

Whether a patient with a work-related collarbone fracture has surgery or not doesn’t make a difference in how long it takes them to return to work, according to a new study in the Journal of Shoulder and Elbow Surgery. The study, by Dr. Edward Shields and colleagues in the Department of Orthopaedics at the University of Rochester Medical Center in New York, was published online last week. The researchers looked at 169 claims for clavicle fractures: 34 were treated surgically and 135 were non-operative cases. The data came from a retrospective query of a workers' compensati...