Your 20-year-old female patient is training for a marathon and experiences progressively intense pain in her left second metatarsal. You suspect a stress fracture and recommend that she stop running and return for repeat radiographs in 2 weeks. However, she wants a diagnosis immediately. Your office schedules her for:

Question

Quizplus · Accepted Answer

An orthopedic consultation would not be needed if there is no stress fracture. Lower extremity noninvasive arterial testing is for arterial disease, not a stress fracture. CT would only show an advanced stress fracture with visible morphologic changes; CT is not as sensitive to bone marrow edema as MRI and not as sensitive to physiologic bone activity as a radionuclide study.

Your 20-Year-Old Female Patient Is Training for a Marathon and Experiences