Toby Price will undergo more surgery today after the screw in his fractured wrist wore away at the bone like a ‘windscreen wiper’ during his victorious Dakar Rally campaign.
Price broke the scaphoid in his right wrist in a training accident in December but braved intense pain to win the world’s greatest rally raid a month later.
However, the pressure placed on the wrist during that ride has caused the screw to grind the surrounding bone and the wrist will therefore not heal without more surgery.
The diagnosis was delivered by Brisbane-based orthopaedic surgeon Dr Steve Andrews, who addressed Price in a video which the Red Bull KTM Factory Team rider published on Facebook.
“They’ve fixed your fractured scaphoid five weeks ago, or six weeks ago, and it looks like it’s all gone back together reasonably well,” Dr Andrews told Price.
“Unfortunately, the load of you riding in that timeframe has put a fair bit through the hold that that screw’s got in your scaphoid, and it’s started to collapse.
“It’s not healing, and the distal end of the screw is starting to ‘windscreen wiper’ and cause a big cavity in the distal pole of your scaphoid, so it’s not going to heal if we leave it there because it’s not well-fixed and it’s actually collapsing into the wrong position.
“What we’re going to do is take the screw out, put a new screw in through a different angle so that we can get some purchase on what bone is still there and good, and we’re going to pack some graft in from your hip to encourage it to heal and to fill the hole in the distal part of your scaphoid so it can heal up.”
Price, who turned to the camera with an air of nonchalance as he was given the news, was not surprised by what he was told.
“This is not what I wanted to hear, but I was expecting something along these lines!” he wrote.
“Pretty much the bone is about to collapse, so surgery is required which Dr. Steve Andrews explains!
“I’ll be heading into surgery today but hey, I got the Dakar win on it, so was worth it I think!”
The video concludes with Price and Dr Andrews reviewing the x-rays of his wrist.
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