Device that knits bones back together allows Pocatello woman to recover from broken leg in just weeks

POCATELLO – A medical device that helps to regrow bones has allowed a local woman to recover from a broken leg in just weeks.

Florence Montague, 67, rolled her left foot while at home on April 8 and found out the next day that she had broken it. After using EXOGEN, an ultrasound bone healing system, she recovered from the fracture by the start of June, only eight weeks later.

“You wouldn’t even know I’ve had a problem. You wouldn’t even know I broke my foot,” Montague said.

In order to achieve these results, all Montague had to do was strap the device on so that its disk was over her fracture, hit the start button and sit while it used ultrasound waves to slowly stitch the bones back together. Montague only had to use the device, which is about the size of her cell phone, for 20 minutes every night.

Even though she had previous injuries to her right foot, Montague was living an active lifestyle before her most recent injury. After getting off work from her full-time job at Pain and Spine Clinic, she spent time knitting, tending to her garden and hiking through pastures near her home south of Pocatello.

“There is no moss growing on this 67-year-old person,” Montague said.

But this changed for her after she walked into her kitchen, shifting her feet to avoid stepping on one of her three cats.

“I rolled my foot and felt a horrible pain,” Montague said.

Despite the pain, she thought she had only sprained it, so she went to sleep that night and then limped out of the house the next day. Before she went to work, she had to go to a scheduled MRI, where she walked up and then down four steep steps of stairs.

“If you had told me I had broken it, I’d have told you you were nuts,” Montague said.

After she arrived at work, her doctor noticed her pain and sent her downstairs to get an X-ray.

“I hate to tell you this, but you have a broken foot,” the X-ray technician told her after the scan.

That same day, her doctor referred her for an appointment to see Dr. Karson Howard, a podiatrist at the Ambulatory Foot and Ankle Clinic across the street.

Howard recommended use of the device for Montague, just like he’s been doing for a number of his patients for over a decade.

While he’s found other devices that also promote bone healing, he’s never found one that’s as patient-friendly. Howard has found some devices that are much larger and take around 6 to 8 hours to use.

“You look at not only the results of how well it works, but also the fact that a lot of patients are only going to use something if it’s easy enough for them,” Howard said.

The way Howard explained it, all that EXOGEN does is stimulate the bone cells, which promotes a quicker recovery time. These treatments aren’t painful for the user and speed up recovery.

“(It) gives them enough of a boost, enough stimulation to say, ‘Hey, let’s keep working. Let’s not forget to heal this fracture,’” Howard explained.

Howard normally recommends this treatment only to people who have a fracture in an area with less blood flow — like a foot; if they have some form of decreased bone strength; or if they’ve had a prior surgery where the bone hasn’t healed.

“I’d love to put it on everyone if I could, but they’re not always covered by insurance,” Howard explained.

If someone tries to pay for EXOGEN out of pocket, it can cost up to $4,000.

“So it’s not really an option for a lot of people,” Howard said.

In Montague’s situation, it was an option. Howard contacted her insurance provider, who told her that it would cost her around $600, and luckily, she had that in an FSA account.

Montague quickly realized how much her new broken foot would affect her daily life at home. While she knew that she wouldn’t be able to take long hikes, she also found that she couldn’t do her regular gardening.

As Montague did the EXOGEN treatements and did her best to get around in her boot, she was worried about how the injury would affect her life in the long-term.

“You’ve already got one bad foot, and now you’ve got another,” Montague worried. “I was devastated. Just devastated.”

After a couple weeks of treatments, Montague went in for a follow-up appointment for another X-ray, and Howard told her that her bone was healing well.

“Maybe that little gadget I’m wearing every night is really working,” Montague said.

Montague was back to her active lifestyle for nearly the whole summer. She recently had a friend visit her. They took walks together up and down her road and even hiked through a cavern in the Shoshone Ice Caves. On October 20, she and her husband took a trip up to Shaun Falls.

Howard hopes that as more time goes by, insurance companies will expand their coverage for the device so that more patients can quicken their healing time.

“A lot of great things that we’re doing now that are known as advances in medicine were actually probably introduced like 40 years ago, but now they’re finally seen as acceptable methods,” Howard said.

Montague believes that everyone should be able to have the opportunity to use EXOGEN and hopes more patients will have access to it in the future.

“Everybody should be able to afford such a device,” Montague said. “Who wouldn’t want to be healed quicker?”