Rapid diagnosis of “Fatigue” stress fractures using bone scintigraphy: A practical approach

Abstract

Stress fractures can broadly classified into “fatigue” or “insufficiency” fractures depending on baseline bone health and amount of physical activity. Of these fatigue stress fractures present with a classical history of increased physical activity in healthy bones followed by pain typically after a few weeks. Imaging modalities include plain radiographs, MRI, CT Scan, Bone Scintigraphy (Scan) and Ultrasound. We discuss a short case series and explore key points for all these modalities and propose a simple algorithm for rapid diagnosis of fatigue stress fractures involving three phase bone scan.