Can. This usually happens with older women. In most cases, this requires a prolonged cough.
Such a cough occurs after some kind of infection or with chronic bronchitis, or due to reflux of acid from the stomach, or from the drainage of snot from the nose.
Half of the people with broken ribs from a cough had two or more of these reasons at once. The victims said that at some point they coughed so badly that they had a sharp pain in their side.
Aunties over 50 with low bone mineral density are at risk the most.
When victims complained to a doctor, they were usually diagnosed with myositis, myalgia, intercostal neuralgia, or myofascial pain syndrome.
In fact, their ribs were broken. Most often it happens with 5 - 7 pairs of ribs. Acute pain appears on the side below the armpit, and such a fracture is usually very poorly visible on an x-ray. Sometimes it was necessary not only to do a computed tomogram, but even a radioisotope scan.
There, a bone sometimes breaks like a child's. Just like a crack inside the bone. It is almost imperceptible from the outside.
It happened that the aunts complained so much that it was very similar to angina pectoris. Such victims were then spun on a bicycle in order to provoke changes in the electrocardiogram. They didn’t find anything, of course, but only even more ruffled the sore ribs with physical activity.
In fact, anyone can have a rib fracture from physical exertion. You don't even need to have osteoporosis to do this. Winter rib fractures from coughing coexist with rib fractures in rowing athletes.
Ribs break when the bone is loaded for a long time in one direction. The architecture of the bone is gradually rebuilt and then cracks. Well, it's like trying to break off a piece of wire. Have you tried it? It must be bent and unbent many times, and then the wire will break.
So rowers in the winter do not train in boats, but in simulators. They row and row and row there for hours and end up breaking their ribs.
Such a sad story. Does your side still hurt?
