[Stress hip fractures in men in military training]

Stress fractures are common injuries in the military population, they begin with the imposition of repetitive and excessive effort on the bone. This leads to the acceleration of bone remodeling and production of microfractures. The incidence, during their basic combat training, is 0.8 to 5.1% for men compared to 1.1 to 18% among women. We present a series of hip stress fractures in young male military men with progressive training of 8 hours a day over a period of 14 weeks.

Mean age 19.72 years, 4 transcervical and 7 basicervical fractures, 6 displaced and 5 no, 54.5 % right. All treated with osteosynthesis, DHHS (blockable compression plate system with hip spiral blade) in 3, cannulated screws in 3 and the proximal femoral fixation system with trochanteric nail (TFN) in five patients. The only common factor in all of them was intensive military training, pathology of metabolic or endocrine origin was ruled out. Onset of symptomatology measured in weeks with an average of 5. All patients had a delay in diagnosis with an average of 12.09 days at the time of definitive diagnosis.

The diagnosis in stress fractures should be made based on clinical suspicion since the pain is insidious and in the report of the current condition patients fail to identify an exact moment as the onset of injury. The functional results were good and all of them managed to finish their military training.