Mayo Clinic Health Manager
Get free personalized health guidance for you and your family.
Get Started
About our e-newsletters
- Free e-newsletters
- Mayo Clinic expertise
- We do not share your e-mail address
Housecall, our weekly general-interest e-newsletter, keeps you up to date on a wide variety of health topics with timely, reliable, practical information, recipes, blogs, questions and answers with Mayo Clinic experts and more. Our biweekly topic-specific e-newsletters also include blogs, questions and answers with Mayo Clinic experts, and other useful information that will help you manage your health.
Housecall Archives
Mayo Clinic Housecall
Stay up to date on the latest health information.
What you get
- Free weekly e-newsletter
- Mayo Clinic expertise
- Recipes, tools and other helpful information
- We do not share your e-mail address
Tests and diagnosis
By Mayo Clinic staffBroken bones — especially stress fractures — are sometimes difficult to diagnose, so your doctor may suggest additional types of imaging scans.
X-rays
Most ankle and foot fractures can be visualized on X-rays. The technician may need to take X-rays from several different angles so that the bone images won't overlap too much. Stress fractures often don't show up on X-rays until the break actually starts healing.
Bone scan
For a bone scan, a technician will inject a small amount of radioactive material into an intravenous line. The radioactive material is attracted to your bones, especially the parts of your bones that have been damaged. Damaged areas show up as bright spots on an image taken by a scanner.
Computerized tomography
CT scans are useful because they can reveal more detail about the bone and the soft tissues that surround it, which may help your doctor determine the best treatment. CT scans take X-rays from many different angles and combine them to make cross-sectional images of internal structures of your body.
- Ho K, et al. Ankle and foot: Foot. In: Marx JA, et al. Rosen's Emergency Medicine: Concepts and Clinical Practice. 6th ed. Philadelphia, Pa.: Mosby Elsevier; 2006. http://www.mdconsult.com/das/book/body/119940582-3/803115108/1365/151.html. Accessed Feb. 11, 2009.
- Ho K, et al. Ankle and foot: Ankle. In: Marx JA, et al. Rosen's Emergency Medicine: Concepts and Clinical Practice. 6th ed. Philadelphia, Pa.: Mosby Elsevier; 2006. http://www.mdconsult.com/das/book/body/119940582-3/803115108/1365/150.html#4-u1.0-B0-323-02845-4..50060-3--cesec26_2557. Accessed Feb. 11, 2009.
- Toe and forefoot fractures. American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons. http://orthoinfo.aaos.org/topic=A00165. Accessed Feb. 11, 2009.
- Ankle fractures. American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons. http://orthoinfo.aaos.org/topic.cfm?topic=A00391. Accessed Feb. 11, 2009.
- Stress fractures of the foot and ankle. American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons. http://orthoinfo.aaos.org/topic.cfm?topic=A00379. Accessed Feb. 11, 2009.
- deWeber K. Overview of stress fractures. http://www.uptodate.com/home/index.html. Accessed Feb. 11, 2009.
- Hatch RL, et al. Metatarsal shaft fractures. http://www.uptodate.com/home/index.html. Accessed Feb. 11, 2009.
- General nuclear medicine. Radiological Society of North America. http://www.radiologyinfo.org/en/info.cfm?PG=gennuclear. Accessed Feb. 12, 2009.
- CT: Body. Radiological Society of North America. http://www.radiologyinfo.org/en/info.cfm?PG=bodyct. Accessed Feb. 12, 2009.
