Health Library

Broken toe - self-care

Fractured toe - self-care; Broken bone - toe - self-care; Fracture - toe - self-care; Fracture phalanx - toe

I Would Like to Learn About:

Description

Each toe is made up of 2 or 3 small bones. These bones are small and fragile. They can break after you stub your toe or drop something heavy on it.

More About Your Injury

Broken toes are a common injury. The fracture is most often treated without surgery and can be taken care of at home.

Severe injuries include:

• Breaks that cause the toe to be crooked
• Breaks that cause an open wound
• Injuries that involve the big toe

If you have a severe injury, you should seek medical help.

Injuries that involve the big toe may need a cast or splint to heal. In rare cases, tiny pieces of bone can break off and keep the bone from healing properly. In this case, you may need surgery.

What to Expect

Symptoms of a broken toe include:

• Pain
• Swelling
• Bruising that can last up to 2 weeks
• Stiffness

If your toe is crooked after the injury, the bone may be out of place and may need to be straightened in order to heal properly. This may be done either with or without surgery.

Most broken toes will heal on their own with proper care at home. It can take 4 to 6 weeks for complete healing. Most pain and swelling will go away within a few days to a week.

If something was dropped on your toe, the area under the toenail can bruise. This will go away in time with nail growth. If there is substantial blood under the nail, it may be removed to reduce pain and potentially prevent the loss of the nail.

Symptom Relief

For the first few days after your injury:

• Rest. Stop doing any physical activity that causes pain, and keep your foot immobile whenever possible.
• Make an ice pack by putting ice in a sealable plastic bag and wrapping a cloth around it. Do not put the bag of ice directly on the area, as the ice could damage your skin. For the first 24 hours, ice your toe for 20 minutes every hour you are awake, then 2 to 3 times a day.
• Keep your foot raised to help keep swelling down.
• Take pain medicine if necessary.

For pain, you can take ibuprofen (Advil, Motrin), naproxen (Aleve, Naprosyn), aspirin, or acetaminophen (Tylenol). You can buy these pain medicines without a prescription.

• Talk with your health care provider before using these medicines if you have heart disease, high blood pressure, kidney disease, liver disease, or have had stomach ulcers or bleeding.
• Do not take more than the amount recommended on the bottle.
• Do not give aspirin to people under age 19 years.

Your provider may prescribe a stronger medicine if needed. Tell your provider about any other medicines you are taking as medicine interactions may occur.

Self-care at Home

To take care of your injury at home:

• Buddy taping. Wrap tape around the injured toe and the toe next to it. This helps keep your toe stable. Place a small wad of cotton between your toes to prevent tissues from becoming too moist. Change the cotton daily.
• Footwear. It may be painful to wear a regular shoe. In this case, your provider may recommend a stiff-bottomed shoe. This will protect your toe and make room for swelling. Once the swelling has gone down, wear a solid, stable shoe to protect your toe.

Activity

Slowly increase the amount of walking you do each day. You can return to normal activity once the swelling has gone down, and you can wear a stable and protective shoe.

There may be some soreness and stiffness when you walk. This will go away once the muscles in your toe begin to stretch and strengthen.

Ice your toe after activity if there is any pain.

More severe injuries that require casting, reduction, or surgery will take time to heal, possibly 6 to 8 weeks.

Follow-up

Follow up with your provider 1 to 2 weeks after your injury. If the injury is severe, your provider may want to see you more than once. X-rays may be taken.

When to Call the Doctor

Contact your provider if you have any of the following:

• Sudden numbness or tingling
• A sudden increase in pain or swelling
• An open wound or bleeding
• Fever or chills
• Healing that is slower than expected
• Red streaks on the toe or foot
• Toes that appear more crooked or bent

References

Alkhamisi A. Toe fractures. In: Eiff MP, Hatch RL, Higgins MK, eds. Fracture Management for Primary Care and Emergency Medicine. 4th ed. Philadelphia, PA: Elsevier; 2020:chap 16.

Bettin CC. Fractures and dislocations of the foot. In: Azar FM, Sawyer JR, Throckmorton TW, Jones L, Priggel T, Coble T, eds. Campbell's Operative Orthopaedics. 15th ed. Philadelphia, PA: Elsevier; 2027:chap 93.

Rose NGW, Green TJ. Ankle and foot injuries. In: Walls RM, ed. Rosen's Emergency Medicine: Concepts and Clinical Practice. 10th ed. Philadelphia, PA: Elsevier; 2023:chap 49.

Review Date: 4/13/2026  

Reviewed By: Jesse Borke, MD, CPE, FAAEM, FACEP, Attending Physician at Kaiser Permanente, Orange County, CA. Also reviewed by David C. Dugdale, MD, Medical Director, Brenda Conaway, Editorial Director, and the A.D.A.M. Editorial team.

A.D.A.M., Inc. is accredited by URAC, for Health Content Provider (www.urac.org). URAC's accreditation program is an independent audit to verify that A.D.A.M. follows rigorous standards of quality and accountability. A.D.A.M. is among the first to achieve this important distinction for online health information and services. Learn more about A.D.A.M.'s editorial policy, editorial process and privacy policy. A.D.A.M. is also a founding member of Hi-Ethics. This site complies with the HONcode standard for trustworthy health information: verify here.

The information provided herein should not be used during any medical emergency or for the diagnosis or treatment of any medical condition. A licensed medical professional should be consulted for diagnosis and treatment of any and all medical conditions. Links to other sites are provided for information only -- they do not constitute endorsements of those other sites. No warranty of any kind, either expressed or implied, is made as to the accuracy, reliability, timeliness, or correctness of any translations made by a third-party service of the information provided herein into any other language.

© 1997- 2026 A.D.A.M., a business unit of Ebix, Inc. Any duplication or distribution of the information contained herein is strictly prohibited.

All content on this site including text, images, graphics, audio, video, data, metadata, and compilations is protected by copyright and other intellectual property laws. You may view the content for personal, noncommercial use. Any other use requires prior written consent from Ebix. You may not copy, reproduce, distribute, transmit, display, publish, reverse-engineer, adapt, modify, store beyond ordinary browser caching, index, mine, scrape, or create derivative works from this content. You may not use automated tools to access or extract content, including to create embeddings, vectors, datasets, or indexes for retrieval systems. Use of any content for training, fine-tuning, calibrating, testing, evaluating, or improving AI systems of any kind is prohibited without express written consent. This includes large language models, machine learning models, neural networks, generative systems, retrieval-augmented systems, and any software that ingests content to produce outputs. Any unauthorized use of the content including AI-related use is a violation of our rights and may result in legal action, damages, and statutory penalties to the fullest extent permitted by law. Ebix reserves the right to enforce its rights through legal, technological, and contractual measures.