Hawkes Physiotherapy Blog

Medial tibial stress syndrome pretty much covers most of the bony component of shin splints. It commonly affects the lower two thirds of the inside border of the tibia. The stress to the bone initially causes periostitis at first, which is inflammation in the lining of the bone. An escalation of this takes it to oedema of the bone marrow inside the bone. The bone gradually weakens and the final stage is a stress fracture. Incidence: Medial tibial stress syndrome in runners has an incidence ranging from 13.6% to 20.0% (Lopes  et al 2012) but other sports such as dancing and football can also get Shin splints. Interestingly stress fracture risk is between 1.5 to 3.5 times more in women than in men (Dugan & Weber 2007). This is thought to be related to bone density being lower in females. How long does it take to resolve? Overall medial tibial stress syndrome took 72 days on average to recovery in novice runners according to Nielsen et al (2014). More spec...

What are shin splints? For starters, like many other “diagnoses” , shin splints isn’t a diagnosis it is a group of different conditions that essentially cause shin pain (Batt 1995). So if someone says that you have shin splints you could quite easily say “thanks for the pointless observation that I have shin pain and tell me what I really have!” I’m sure you wouldn’t but it makes my point. So what are the conditions under the heading shin splints then? Most people think of a stress fracture when you say shin splints but this is only one potential issue. There are actually over 30 conditions that come under the umbrella term of ‘shin splints’.  Some are super rare, so not worth discussing in this blog but we will discuss the more common ones in detail over the coming articles. Trust me if we didn't then this article could turn into a novel! It is best to split shin splints up into the structures affected. These are as follows: Bone related Muscle & Te...