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My 16-year-old son is a long-distance runner and he came home complaining of a lot of pain in his foot. The doctor took some x-rays and said that his foot was fine, just to take it easy for a while. A couple of weeks later, his foot was hurting more and we took him to a different clinic where the doctor used an MRI to diagnose a stress fracture, caused by his running. We're angry it wasn't diagnosed the first time. How could that be missed?
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Stress fractures are breaks in the bone that are caused by overuse. They typically occur in athletes or dancers, who put a lot of pressure on their feet and legs, although a stress fracture could occur anywhere.
The thing about stress fractures is they are not always easy to see on x-rays. In the early stages, they may not be visible at all. It could take between six to 10 weeks for a stress fracture to be seen by x-ray. There are other ways to diagnose, including magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and bone scans, but they are costly and, in the case of a bone scan, invasive. If the symptoms your son showed didn't cause the first doctor to suspect a stress fracture and the x-ray didn't show one, it isn't surprising that the fracture was missed.
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