The injury Dani Pedrosa suffered at Qatar is worse than at first thought. We reported earlier that Pedrosa had come away from the accident with only bruising and swelling, but after a closer examination it is now apparent that Dani has suffered a distal radius fracture, an injury which will require the fitting of a titanium screw to compress the fracture. He is scheduled to undergo surgery on Wednesday afternoon.
Pedrosa is to have a skin graft on the knee at the same time as his wrist surgery. The injuries are the result of his crash in the first day of testing when his bike landed on him after highsiding him off in Turn 10 in Qatar.
Honda previously issued a press release stating they expected Pedrosa to be riding at the official Irta test in Jerez at the end of March, but it is doubtful that Pedrosa will be at full fitness by then. A distal radius fracture is not as difficult an injury as a scaphoid, but it can get very complicated due to the amount of soft tissue that is involved in the structure of the wrist. The Dexeus institute, where Pedrosa is to undergo surgery, will be issuing an update on his condition tomorrow.
One of the first to attend to Dani Pedrosa after his crash in Qatar was Clinica Mobile’s Doctor Claudio Macchiagodena who had initially eased fears over the Spaniard’s condition. The experienced paddock medic performed the initial examination on Pedrosa’s left hand and knee, and his early findings were limited to bruising and swelling.
“Pedrosa’s crash has left him with trauma in the left knee and arm, of which the knee damage seems to be the most serious because of the previous injury (suffered at Phillip Island last year and subsequently treated with surgery). There is no evidence of any fracture and it will simply require re-bandaging,” said Macchiagodena on Monday night.
“There was a suspicion that perhaps a bone had been fractured in his hand, but the first examination has ruled this out. We will have to wait for 24 hours for the swelling to go down and be able to definitively eliminate the possibility of muscle or bone damage.”
This new information leaves a lot of question marks on how Dani will fair in the coming season, where he will be likely riding injured for a significant part of the season. If there is one constant in MotoGP though, its the amazing amount of pain and injuries that riders overcome to ride on Sunday. We have no doubt Dani will do the same.
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