Meet the Experts

Noel Gressner

Physical Therapist with Miami Orthopedics & Sports Medicine Institute

Videos

Intensity Of Stress Fracture Pain

According to Noel Gressner, Physical Therapist at Miami Orthopedics and Sports Medicine Institute, you do not need to feel pain to be diagnosed or to take into consideration a problem that can end with a stress pain. He also says pain is subjective and you can get a radiography or MRI to be more precise in the diagnose and then progress with the rehab process.

Exercises For Stress Fractures

Noel Gressner, Physical Therapist at Miami Orthopedics and Sports Medicine Institute, suggests doing exercises in a position that does not provoke pain. He also says manual physical therapy is a way of using joint manipulation, joint mobilization, among others to try to treat the spine, and part of the recovery is the manual hands-on treatment technique.

Learning About Stress Fractures

Noel Gressner, Physical Therapist at Miami Orthopedics and Sports Medicine Institute, explains spondylolysis and spondylolisthesis are terms to refer to a certain area of the spine of the vertebral column that would be fractured. He says it is like an extension and rotation type of mechanism of injury repetitively happening to what's called the pars interarticularis. According to him, stress fracture can progress into a full-blown fracture and it can also progress into both sides.

Types Of Fractures

There are some types of fractures. One is wedge/vertebral fracture, it usually occurs in the front of the vertebra; another one is crush fracture, when the entire bone breaks, rather than just the front of the vertebra. Burst fracture is another type, which involves some loss of the height in both the front and back walls of the vertebral body. Noel Gressner, Physical Therapist at Miami Orthopedics and Sports Medicine Institute, says sudden onset back pain, limited spinal mobility, height loss and deformity and disability are symptoms of vertebral fractures.

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