Dr. Mary Kneiser: Managing stress fractures in athletes

Dr. Mary Kneiser is a board-certified physical medicine and rehabilitation specialist.

Summer is extra special this year with the staging of the London Olympics. With more than 10,500 athletes competing in 26 events, the spotlight is on the sportsmen and women who will be competing for their country’s pride.

But amid all the pomp and glory surrounding the Olympics, there is another facet of such sporting event, which is literally painful for athletes. Rehabilitation specialists call this stress fracture.

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Stress fractures are overuse injuries of the bone. These fractures, which may be nascent or complete, result from repetitive subthreshold loading that, over time, exceeds the bone's intrinsic ability to repair itself. Physiatrists, like Dr. Mary Kneiser, explain that stress fractures commonly occur in sedentary people who suddenly undertake a burst of exercise with their bones not used to the tasks. In athletes, stress fractures happen to those who do extraordinary quantities of high-impact exercise, such as professional and amateur distance runners who run high weekly mileage.

Symptoms and treatment

Stress fractures usually have few symptoms. A stress fracture could present as a generalized area of pain and tenderness associated with weight bearing. When running, a stress fracture in the leg or foot will cause severe pain at the beginning of the run, moderate pain in the middle of the run, and severe pain in the end of the run.

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Rehabilitation experts such as Mary Kneiser note that the foundation of treatment for symptomatic stress injury is activity modification. For most stress fractures, the period of relative rest may be expected to last from 4-12 weeks. Factors influencing the duration of the activity restriction include the anatomic site of the stress injury and the extent of the stress injury.

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When getting back on your feet following a stress fracture, you must balance the need to return to sport with the need for safe healing. Rehabilitation specialists, like Dr. Mary Kneiser ,can help you do so. For more information about Dr. Kneiser, visit www.abilityassessments.com.