Case Study - Special Collection: Paediatric Radiology

‘Soccer toe’: Chronic physeal injury of the great toe metatarsal in a skeletally immature child - A case report

Andrew Schapiro, Tal Laor
South African Journal of Radiology | Vol 24, No 1 | a1834 | DOI: https://doi.org/10.4102/sajr.v24i1.1834 | © 2020 Andrew Schapiro, Tal Laor | This work is licensed under CC Attribution 4.0
Submitted: 06 January 2020 | Published: 22 April 2020

About the author(s)

Andrew Schapiro, Department of Radiology, University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center, Cincinnati, OH, United States
Tal Laor, Department of Radiology, Harvard Medical School, Boston Children’s Hospital, Boston, MA, United States

Abstract

Chronic physeal stress injuries in children can result from ongoing, repetitive compression, distraction and/or shear forces during sports-related activity, and manifest as physeal widening on imaging. We present an 11-year-old soccer athlete with focal physeal widening of her great toe metatarsal and postulate that ongoing or repetitive stress from soccer play may manifest as this imaging appearance. We suggest that recognition of this entity in growing children might explain pain, if present, and guide conservative treatment.

Keywords

Physis; Growth plate; Toe; MRI; Stress; Musculoskeletal imaging; Sports medicine

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Crossref Citations

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