The march fracture persists: A report on 145 cases during a fifteen-month period at an infantry basic training center

Abstract

1. 1. One hundred forty-five cases of march fracture involving 142 patients were treated by hospitalization and immobilization of the injured extremity in a short-leg walking cast at the U. S. Army Hospital, Indiantown Gap Military Reservation. The injuries were incurred over a fifteen-month period, from May, 1951 until August, 1952, and include all patients treated at the hospital. 2. 2. There were 137 Caucasian and 5 Negro patients, with ages ranging from seventeen to thirty-one (average age, twenty-one). 3. 3. There were three readmissions for additional march fracture incurred from four to eight months later. 4. 4. The right foot was involved eighty-one times, the left sixty-seven. The third metatarsal was the most frequently injured, there being eighty fractures of this bone; there were fifty-five of the second metatarsal, with only ten of the fourth, and three of the fifth. There were no march fractures of the first metatarsal. Three patients had two fractures simultaneously. 5. 5. The incidence of march fractures reaches a peak around the tenth week of basic training, which corresponds to the periods of lengthy speed marches and vigorous mountain climbing.