Prospective 12-month cohort study of 111 competitive track and field athletes (ages 17–26) measuring the annual incidence of stress fractures, their anatomical distribution, and whether incidence or fracture site differed by sex or event type.
When a track athlete presents with bony pain, remember that roughly 1 in 5 will sustain a stress fracture annually — and the event they compete in predicts where to look: suspect the foot (navicular, metatarsal) in sprinters and jumpers, and the tibia, femur, or pelvis in distance runners.
Normalizing risk to training hours rather than athlete count is the more informative metric, and this paper established that practice.
Prospective 12-month cohort study of 111 competitive track and field athletes (ages 17–26) measuring the annual incidence of stress fractures, their anatomical distribution, and whether incidence or fracture site differed by sex or event type.
When a track athlete presents with bony pain, remember that roughly 1 in 5 will sustain a stress fracture annually — and the event they compete in predicts where to look: suspect the foot (navicular, metatarsal) in sprinters and jumpers, and the tibia, femur, or pelvis in distance runners.
Normalizing risk to training hours rather than athlete count is the more informative metric, and this paper established that practice.