01 Oct What to Know Before Choosing PRP for Knee Pain
When PRP injections make sense for knee pain, what the research shows, how rehabilitation fits in, and questions to ask before treatment. ...
When PRP injections make sense for knee pain, what the research shows, how rehabilitation fits in, and questions to ask before treatment. ...
Prof. Field[/caption]
Alison E. Field, ScD
Professor and Chair of Epidemiology
Brown University School of Public Heath
Providence, RI
MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study?
Response: Over past couple of decades there has been a large change in youth sports from playing different sports in each season to more and more specialization where children are playing the same sport for three or more seasons. The concern with that change is that specialization at young ages will lead to more injuries, as well as athlete burnout.
Jason L. Zaremski, MD, CAQSM, FACSM, FAAPMR
Assistant Professor│Divisions of PM&R, Sports Medicine, & Research
Department of Orthopaedics and Rehabilitation
Co-Medical Director Adolescent & High School Outreach Program
University of Florida College of Medicine
MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings?
Response: Throwing injuries are common in baseball and can be caused by excessive pitch counts, year-round pitching, and pitching with arm pain and fatigue. Despite the evidence, pitching injuries among high school players have not decreased. With a multitude of research in overhead throwers, yet the volume of overuse throwing injuries not decreasing, our team suspected there was a missing workload factor in baseball pitchers. Therefore, our team conducted research to determine whether an important factor was being overlooked: volume of pitches thrown during warm-up between innings and bullpen activity in high school varsity baseball pitchers.
In the study, our team counted all pitches thrown off a mound during varsity high school baseball games played by 34 different high schools in North Central Florida during the 2017 season. After counting nearly 14,000 pitches in 115 pitch outings, our team found that 42% of the pitches thrown off a mound were not accounted for in the pitch counts, and that there is a large variability of bullpen pitches being thrown from pitcher to pitcher. Even with a greater focus on pitch counts as a way to prevent injuries, a substantial number of pitches are going unaccounted for in high school players as part of warm-up and bullpen activity.
Dr. Brett D Owens, MD
Dr. Owens is currently Team Physician for the US Lacrosse National Men’s Team, and
Team Physician for Brown University
Professor at Uniformed Services University and Professor at Brown University
Alpert School of Medicine
MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings?
Response: This study is a review of the literature on ski and snowboarding injuries. We summarize findings by our group and others on the injuries seen with these snow sports and report an overall increase in injuries as participation continues to increase.
Snowboarders have a higher injury rate and there are different injury patterns with skiers experiencing more lower extremity injuries (knee) and snowboarders experiencing more upper extremity injuries (wrist, shoulder, etc.).
Dr. Zachary Kerr[/caption]
MedicalResearch.com Interview with:
Zachary Y. Kerr, PhD, MPH
Sports Injury Epidemiologist
Director, NCAA Injury Surveillance Program
Datalys Center for Sports Injury Research and Prevention
Indianapolis, IN 46202
Medical Research: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings?
Dr. Kerr: The NCAA Injury Surveillance Program has been ongoing since 1982, but the Datalys Center for Sports Injury Research and Prevention began management in 2009. We provide the NCAA sports and medical committees with evidence-based data they can use to make rule and policy decisions aimed at student-athlete health and safety. However, among the research community, there lacks current injury incidence data across the collegiate student-athlete population.
The main findings of this study is that the rate of injury was higher in competitions than in practices. However, the total number of injuries estimated in practices exceeds that of competition, which suggests that interventions should be aimed at reducing injury incidence in both practices and competitions.
MedicalResearch.com Interview with:
Thomas Karakolis
Department of Kinesiology
University of Waterloo
Waterloo, Ontario, Canada
Medical Research: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings?
Response: Major League Baseball (MLB) pitchers have an injury rate approaching 1 in 4, depending on the study you look at. As an occupational injury rate, this number is extremely high. In fact, I think you would be hard pressed to find another industry where the injury rate is that high.
One way that coaches and managers in MLB are trying to lower the
injury rate is to restrict the total 'workload' on pitchers per
season. Particularly in young pitchers, many MLB organizations
restrict the number of innings a pitcher can pitch based upon the
number of innings they pitched the previous year. Essentially, they
are using innings pitched as a surrogate for workload.
If this is an effective strategy, you would expect a correlation
between the increase in number of innings pitched between successive
seasons and future injury. Our study found that no such correlation
exists. Innings pitched does not appear to be a sensitive enough
measure to asses the true workload a pitcher experiences throughout
the season.
MedicalResearch.com Interview with:
Lara B. McKenzie, PhD MA
Center for Injury Research and Policy
The Research Institute at Nationwide Children’s Hospital
Columbus, OH 43205
Medical Research: What are the main findings of the study?
Dr. McKenzie: Our main findings were that lacrosse injury rates and patterns are different by sex and by type of athletic activity. Boys’ lacrosse allows for some person-to-person contact, while girls’ lacrosse largely outlaws it. Boys had an overall injury rate of 2.26 per 1000 athletic exposures, and girls had an injury rate of 1.54 per 1000 athletic exposures. The overall injury rate was about 3 times higher in competition than in practice. We also found that sprains and strains were the most common injury diagnosis for boys and girls (boys: 35.6% of injuries; girls: 43.9%), but that concussions were a significant injury diagnosis (boys: 21.9% of injuries; girls: 22.7%).
MedicalResearch.com Interview with:
Christoher C. Kaeding M.D.
Judson Wilson Professor, Department of Orthopaedics
Executive Director, Sports Medicine Center
Head Team Physician, Department of Athletics
The Ohio State University
MedicalResearch: What are the main findings of the study?
Dr. Kaeding:
MedicalResearch.com Interview with:
Lara McKenzie, Ph.D. MA
Associate Professor of Pediatrics
Center for Injury Research and Policy
The Research Institute at Nationwide Children's Hospital
Columbus, Ohio
MedicalResearch.com: What are the main findings of the study?
Dr. McKenzie: Our study was the first to compare and describe epidemiological patterns of basketball-related injuries presenting for treatment to emergency departments and to the high school athletic training setting using surveillance data captured from large, nationally representative samples. Specifically, we compared estimated national incidence, rates of injury and body sites injured, and diagnoses. Nationally, an estimated 1,514,957 athletes with basketball-related injuries reported to the emergency department and 1,064,551 presented to the athletic training setting. Patterns of basketball-related injuries presenting to the emergency department differ from those presenting to the high school athletic training setting for treatment, with those presenting to the emergency department being more severe. In general, injuries that could be relatively quickly assessed and more easily diagnosed and treated, such as strains and/or sprains, presented more commonly to the athletic training setting, while injuries that required more extensive diagnostic or treatment procedures, such as fractures, were treated more commonly in the emergency department.
MedicalResearch.com Interview with:
Neeru Jayanthi, MD
Associate Professor
Medical Director, Primary Care Sports Medicine
Loyola University Medical Center study
MedicalResearch.com: What are the main findings of the study?
Dr. Jayanthi: We surveyed a cohort of 1,190 athletes ages 7 to 18, including 1,121 for whom insurance status could be determined. Our main findings were:
1. The rate of serious overuse injuries in athletes who come from families that can afford private insurance is 68 percent higher than the rate in lower-income athletes who are on public insurance (Medicaid).
2. Privately insured young athletes are twice as likely as publicly insured athletes to be highly specialized in one sport.