• Jonathan C Buchinsky and Reed M Heckert.
• F. Edward Hébert School of Medicine, Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences, Bethesda, MD 20814, USA.
• Mil Med. 2024 Aug 22.

AbstractBone stress injuries are well-documented injury patterns among U.S. Armed Forces recruits because of the rapid increase in frequency and intensity of bone-impacting activities throughout training. In the recruit population, femoral neck stress fractures are of great concern because of their propensity to progress, displace, and lead to lifelong complications like avascular necrosis. We present two cases of bilateral operative femoral neck stress fractures. The first is of a 28-year-old male Marine Corps recruit who experienced bilateral groin pain during the first week of training. He was found to have bilateral grade 4 femoral neck stress fractures with concomitant effusions. Operative management was pursued with bilateral percutaneous pinning. For this patient, one hip had classically indicated operative involvement while on the contralateral hip the decision to operate was based on recent literature predicting progression based on the presence of a joint effusion. The second case is of a 23-year-old male Marine Corps recruit who experienced hip pain in the final few weeks of training. He was also found to have bilateral grade 4 femoral neck stress fractures with concomitant effusions and was similarly operated on. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first reported operative bilateral femoral neck stress fracture case series in a military-aged patient in the literature. A high clinical suspicion for femoral neck stress injuries with early diagnostic imaging for high-risk groups was important in these cases and ultimately led to timely definitive management for this patient.© The Association of Military Surgeons of the United States 2024. All rights reserved. For commercial re-use, please contact reprints@oup.com for reprints and translation rights for reprints. All other permissions can be obtained through our RightsLink service via the Permissions link on the article page on our site–for further information please contact journals.permissions@oup.com.

10 keywords...

hide…