Broken dreams | |
Stress fractures. Peter Brukner, Kim Bennell, Gordon Matheson. Melbourne: Blackwell Science Asia 1999 (xi + 190 pp.). ISBN: 0 86793 01 2. |
Sports medicine publications
have proliferated so much in recent years that there is little market for further general textbooks. This book is the vanguard of what will become the new generation of sports medicine texts -- an extremely thorough review of one specific type of injury. It is aimed primarily at practitioners and researchers who regularly manage stress fractures. The authors are well qualified in their subject. Peter Brukner, a Melbourne-based sports physician, is also the primary author of Clinical Sports Medicine (McGraw Hill), a book more suitable for practitioners who see only the occasional sports injury and need a single, broader reference. Kim Bennell is a physiotherapist and one of Australia's leading sports medicine researchers. She has a PhD in the field of stress fractures and is probably responsible for the extremely thorough literature reviews in the text. In all, there are over 500 references cited. Gordon Matheson is an American pioneer of stress fracture research and is the editor of Physician and Sportsmedicine. On reading this book, it becomes apparent that almost every bone in the body could potentially suffer a stress fracture. Although stress fractures have been recognised for many years in athletes and soldiers, they probably occur far more commonly in the general population than is realised. For example, a stress fracture should be a differential diagnosis in a sedentary 50-year-old who presents with leg pain after a bushwalking holiday. Stress fractures pose a management challenge in that certain types of stress fracture have a very good prognosis with relative rest, while others have a significant risk of fracture displacement and symptomatic non-union. This book serves as a definitive reference, indicating the most appropriate management for a given site of stress fracture. John W Orchard
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