Stress reactions and stress fractures

Abstract

Bone stress injuries is an umbrella term that encompasses repetitive microtraumatic events that accumulate to surpass the threshold of bone failure, which can range from bone marrow edema to frank stress fracture as the end point. Due to nonspecific clinical complaints and physical findings, imaging plays acentral role in the diagnostic workup of these entities. Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is the most important imaging modality with ahigh sensitivity and specificity and allows for differential diagnosis of other diseases. Edema-sensitive with fat suppression and T1-weighted sequences are the core sequence types, and contrast-enhanced imaging-albeit displaying subtle fractures much more easily-is rarely necessary. Furthermore, MRI enables differentiation of injury severity, which has an impact on length of rehabilitation, therapeutic regimen, and the time to return to sports in athletes.