About Stress Fractures
Stress fractures are typically caused by repetitive force and overuse, overwhelming the ability of the bone to adapt. Unlike acute fractures that result from a single trauma event, stress fractures develop gradually over time due to repetitive impact on bones that are not given sufficient time to recover.
Key risk factors include:
- Training changes – Sudden increases in training intensity or duration, or when an athlete transitions to harder surfaces, changes footwear, or modifies their mechanics improperly may also cause them to experience increased impact forces to the bones and contribute to stress fracture development.
- Nutritional & medical factors – Deficiencies, underlying conditions, and lifestyle choices can contribute to stress fractures. For female athletes, addressing low energy availability and menstrual dysfunction is crucial, as both significantly reduce bone density and increase stress fracture risk by 6-10 times.
- Biomechanics & fatigue – Imbalances in foot mechanics or running gait can also contribute to increased impact loading on specific areas. Muscle fatigue is another contributing factor, as we lose the ability to smoothly absorb force as we fatigue, shifting more stress onto the bones.
Treating stress fractures
While most stress fractures will heal fully and reliably with consideration of the above risk factors, some high-risk areas are predisposed to not healing (non-union). In these cases, a more gradual reloading process is necessary, and adjunct treatments—such as medications like Teriparatide—may be recommended alongside optimised nutrition and other interventions such as a LIPUS device.
Many treatments for musculoskeletal conditions can incorporate injections to assist with pain management and/or facilitation of the healing process. Crucially, by alleviating pain, this enables you to advance your rehabilitation and reloading exercises in a faster and often more efficient manner.
Low Intensity Pulsed Ultrasound
- LIPUS (Low Intensity Pulsed Ultrasound) devices such as Exogen, are portable and non-invasive tools designed to promote and accelerate bone healing using targeted ultrasound frequencies.
- They are primarily used for fractures that are slow to heal (delayed union), have failed to heal properly (non-union), or in those where reducing healing time is important such as with professional athletes.
- 38% increased healing time in fresh fractures, with a significant improvement in bone regeneration.
- 86% healing rate in cases of non-union / high risk fractures that would have otherwise often required surgery +/- bone graft.
Many treatments for musculoskeletal conditions can incorporate injections to assist with pain management and/or facilitation of the healing process. Crucially, by alleviating pain, this enables you to advance your rehabilitation and reloading exercises in a faster and often more efficient manner.
Availability
Please note: The Exogen device is available for purchase from the manufacturer. However, while it does have limited use capacity, this capacity is often considerably more than what is required to heal an individual fracture. We therefore can provide a rental agreement for the required length of time of use, with return of the main device after the fracture has healed. Please feel free to reach out to our friendly reception team to find out more about our Exogen LIPUS device rental agreement.