Anterior Tibial Cortex Stress Fracture in a High Demand Professional Soccer Player

Abstract

Anterior tibia cortex consists a less common location stress fractures. Treatment and return-to-play decision making can have the greatest impact on an athlete's career. We report a case of a 33 years old high demand professional soccer player who suffered an anterior tibia cortex stress fracture. After a short period of conservative treatment we proceeded in an intramedullary nailing, drilling on the fracture site and insertion of autologous growth factors were performed in order to assisst the healing process. He returned to full activities (every day training and offi cial games) 9 weeks after the operation. The last radiograph 6 months post operatively showed healing of the fracture. We believe that intramedullary fi xation of anterior cortex tibial stress fractures when combined with drilling and the use of growth factors helps return sooner than expected to full preinjury levels of performance.

Anterior tibial stress fractures treated with anterior tension band plating in high-performance athletes

“…Fracture site drilling or bone grafting aims to increase biological support for consolidation, but these treatment methods still need a long period of abstention from sports and sometimes do not achieve consolidation [9, 10, 12, 16]. Fracture stabilization with an intramedullary nail with or without bone grafting permits a faster return to sports activities and achieves a higher rate of consolidation [1, 6, 8, 20]. However, in some cases, the fracture fails to consolidate, and complete fracture can occur [5, 13, 14, 18, 19].…”