How to tell if my toe is broken?

How can you tell if you toe is broken?

• One day I was juggling the soccer ball in my garage without shoes and I hit it weird with my toe ever since then it has this burning feeling in it.... Any advice on how to tell besides the doctor

• Answer:

  Ultimately, unless the fracture is really obvious then without an x-ray you can't tell for certain. For minor fractures, the treatment is to protect the toe and let it recover, just as you would for a severe bruise. If a minor fracture is suspected, then the usual treatment is to treat it exactly as if it is fractured. Having an x-ray for that makes no difference at all to the treatment and outcome, so doctors increasingly do not order x-rays for it. If they do, then radiographers have been trained to assess whether the risk of radiation exposure is worth doing, and they can and do refuse requests for unnecessary x-rays. If the referring doctor disagrees then the matter is referred to a radiologist who is a doctor specialising in diagnostic imaging and they usually support the radiographer's decision. These days, x-rays of such minor injuries are rare and only occur if the fracture is one which requires resetting or for legal evidential purposes.