Abstract:

BACKGROUND: Fatigue fracture is common injuries in military training. To date, the therapy of the injuries is mainly conservative with the characters of long healing time, poor functional recovery and there is no specific treatment for the fatigue facture.
OBJECTIVE: To compare the effect of extracorporeal shock wave (ESW), autologous bone marrow transplantation (ABMT) and plaster fixation treatment (PFT) on the healing of fatigue fracture in order to seek for the best therapy．
METHODS: Thirty male patients with tibial fatigue fracture type Ⅱ in hospital were randomly divided into three groups: ① ESW group, positioned by the CT, took the fatigue fracture center as the impact point and gave a single treatment. ② ABMT group, took the bone marrow 3-5 mL from lower part of anterior superior iliac spine or the thicker part of posterior inferior iliac spine and injected it in the fatigue fracture ends and gave a single treatment. ③ PFT group, the patients were treated with rest, fixation of the fracture and took blood activating medicine. The fracture healing conditions of three groups were evaluated according to the X-ray imaging and functional recovery standard at the 2nd, 4th, 6th and 8th weeks after treatment, respectively.
RESULTS AND CONCLUSION: According to X-ray results, the difference of fracture healing was not significant in ESW group and ABMT group at 8 weeks after treatment and both of which were better than PFT group (P < 0.05). Functional recovery observation results showed that ESW group is better than ABMT, which is still better than PFT group. ESW treatment is an effective mean in the healing of fatigue fractures.