Sports Medicine Information
Sports injuries are injuries that occur to athletes in major sporting events. In many cases, these types of injuries are due to overuse of a part of the body when participating in a certain activity. For example, runner's knee is a painful condition generally associated with running, while tennis elbow is a form of repetitive stress injury at the elbow, although it does not often occur with tennis players. Other types of injuries can be caused by a hard contact with something. This can often cause a broken bone or torn ligament or tendon
Injuries are a common occurrence in professional sports and most teams have a staff of Athletic Trainers and close connections to the medical community. Controversy has arisen at times when teams have made decisions that could threaten a players long-term health for short term gain.
Classification
Sports injuries can be broadly classified as either traumatic or overuse injuries. Traumatic injuries account for most injuries in contact sports such as Football, Rugby, Australian rules football, Gaelic football and American football because of the dynamic and high collision nature of these sports. These injuries range from bruises and muscle strains, to fractures and head injuries.
A bruise or contusion is damage to small blood vessels which causes bleeding within the tissues. A muscle strain is a small tear of muscle fibers and a ligament sprain is a small tear of ligament tissue. The body’s response to these sports injuries is the same in the initial five day period immediately following the traumatic incident - inflammation.
Inflammation is characterized by pain, localized swelling, heat, redness and a loss of function.
Signs and symptoms
Mechanism
All of these traumatic injuries cause damage to the cells that make up the soft tissues. The dead and damaged cells release chemicals, which initiate an inflammatory response. Small blood vessels are damaged and opened up, producing bleeding within the tissue. In the body’s normal reaction, a small blood clot is formed in order to stop this bleeding and from this clot special cells (called fibroblasts) begin the healing process by laying down scar tissue.
The inflammatory stage is therefore the first phase of healing. However, too much of an inflammatory response in the early stage can mean that the healing process takes longer and a return to activity is delayed. The sports injury treatments are intended to minimize the inflammatory phase of an injury, so that the overall healing process is accelerated.
Prevention
A comprehensive warm-up programme has been found to decrease injuries in soccer.
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- Sprains
- Sprained / ‘Twisted’ Ankle
- Pulled Muscle
- Muscle Cramps
- Frozen Shoulder
- Tennis Elbow
- Shin Splints
- Achilles Tendonitis
- Runner’s Knee
- Lower Back Strain
- Foot Arch Strain & Pain
- Invisalign
- Chiropractic
- Anterior Knee Pain
- Hyphema (Blood in the Eye)
- Skull Fracture
- Osgood-Schlatter disease
- Concussion
- Stress Fracture
- Osteopathy
- Physiotherapy
- Spondylolisthesis
- Plantar Fasciitis
- Knee pain
- Iliotibial band pain
- Big toe joint pain
- Heel pain
- Back Pain
- Cuts and Abrasions
- Dental damage
- Groin Pain and Strain
- Hamstring Strain
- Knee Joint Injury
- Nose Injury
- Headaches and head knocks
- Rotator Cuff injuries
- Shoulder Injury
- Golf Elbow
- Joint Sprain
- Muscle Strain
- Neck Pain
- Tenosynovitis
- Acromioclavicular Joint (ACJ) Injuries
- Hip Osteoarthritis
- Joint pain
- RSI - Repetitive Strain Injuries
- Fractures
- Boot-stud injuries
- Knee damage twisting
- Ankle injuries
- Overuse Injuries
- Football Injuries
- Skiing Injuries
- Running Injuries
- Judo Injuries
- Tennis Injuries
- Swimming Injuries
- Rugby Injuries
- Golf Injuries
- Cricket Injuries
- Athletic Injuries
- Cycling Injuries
- Gymnastics Injuries
- Causes of Sports Injuries
- Sports Injury Treatment
- Sports Physicians
- Sports massage
- Sports Injury Prevention
- Sports Cream Overdose
- Post Operative Rehabilitation
- Sports and Nutrition
- Performance Coaching
- Alcohol and Physical Performance
- Sports Training
- Athletic Trainers
- Sports Injury Testing and Diagnosing
- Headache
- Facial injuries
- Elbow Injuries
- Neck Injuries
- Shoulder Instability
- Muscular Injuries
- Wrist Injuries
- Root compression of nerve
- Stress fracture of pars interarticularis
- Fractured tibia and fibula
- Gastrocnemius/soleus strain
- Sever’s lesion
- Foot Injuries
- Knee Injuries
- Buttock Pain
- Dealing with chronic muscle pain and injury