Preventing Overuse Injuries from Sidelining Young Athletes

Transcript

• 00:00♪ Intense Piano Music ♪
• 00:08- There is increasing pressure
• 00:10to have young athletes push through the pain,
• 00:14being driven by the desire to be the best at that sport.
• 00:19- There's definitely a lot of pressure on athletes
• 00:20of all kinds to go out and play through
• 00:22all the little nagging injuries
• 00:23that happen throughout the season.
• 00:25- Athletes feel like they let people down
• 00:27a little bit and also let themselves down.
• 00:31- With something that's becoming more and more
• 00:32of a problem as we see athletes, both young and old,
• 00:36training more than ever.
• 00:38- They're not stressing their body
• 00:40in different ways, but they're doing very specific things
• 00:43over and over and over repetitively.
• 00:45- And injuries are becoming worse and worse.
• 00:48- That's an overuse injury.
• 00:51We can break down overuse injuries into two main categories.
• 00:54Acute injuries or chronic injuries.
• 01:01- With an acute injury a patient can usually identify
• 01:04the exact cause of what happened.
• 01:07- I heard a pop and I fell down and I was like,
• 01:10things hurt sometimes but you can push through it.
• 01:13I just remember standing up,
• 01:14and it's like my leg didn't work.
• 01:16- She tore her ACL as well as her meniscus.
• 01:19In order to be able to allow her safely to get back
• 01:22to playing a sport like lacrosse,
• 01:24we needed to go in surgically.
• 01:26- I had never dreamed of having an injury like that,
• 01:28that would have such a long recovery.
• 01:32- Chronic injuries are different in that
• 01:34it's usually an acute injury that hasn't healed.
• 01:39- I was dealing with a lot of
• 01:40dull pain through practice.
• 01:42Pain would be worse one day,
• 01:43feel a little better the next day and then come right back.
• 01:46You know you wanna be there for your team
• 01:47and you're just out there trying
• 01:48to play through it as best you can.
• 01:50- We knew that there were a number of things going on
• 01:52in his knee and there were a couple of
• 01:53different things to address surgically.
• 01:55The goal of which is to give him pain relief
• 01:57that he hasn't been able to have otherwise.
• 02:01- Surgery is the first step in the process of the recovery,
• 02:04but there's still several steps that need to happen
• 02:06for that patient to heal effectively.
• 02:08- [Colleen] We're asking them
• 02:10to go back to foundational movements
• 02:13and those type of activities tend to be more mentally taxing
• 02:17than actually physically taxing.
• 02:20- When you're going in there every day
• 02:20doing the same routine, obviously you're going through
• 02:23a lot of physical rehab,
• 02:24but you're also going through a tough mental process.
• 02:27- I became really really depressed after my surgery.
• 02:29I felt so lost.
• 02:31- [Dr. Gardner] Really coming to grips with that emotional
• 02:34and psychological side of the injury is very important.
• 02:37It's actually often that piece to it
• 02:39that drives the physical recovery.
• 02:42- [Dr. Medvecky] Once their pain starts to subside,
• 02:44that's when they feel, okay the clock is on.
• 02:46They have to get back into their sport right away.
• 02:49- As I always say, we can't outpace biology.
• 02:51- [Dr. Medvecky] That's where we properly guide
• 02:52the rehabilitation process.
• 02:55- In the rehabilitation process,
• 02:57it's critical that we correct patient's movement strategies
• 03:02in order to reduce the risk of potential reinjury.
• 03:05- [Dr. Gardner] Being able to retrain and reprogram
• 03:09those movement patterns is one of the essential parts
• 03:12of what we call neuromuscular training programs.
• 03:15- [Dr. Medvecky] This is really balance, coordination,
• 03:18what's called proprioception,
• 03:19which is knowing where your body is in space.
• 03:22- You learn a lot more of the technicalities
• 03:24of every day living.
• 03:25- This really allows us to move away from the
• 03:28somewhat arbitrary guidelines for rehab
• 03:32that have things happening by dates on a calendar
• 03:35rather than the achievement
• 03:36of different milestones along the process.
• 03:40Data really is something that is becoming
• 03:42increasingly valuable, being different types of
• 03:45strength tests or functional tests that simulate the motions
• 03:49that might happen during sports,
• 03:50to be able to provide some objective feedback
• 03:53about where they are in the rehab process.
• 03:55Especially for an athlete who is usually quite goal-driven,
• 03:59to give them numbers and data to work with
• 04:02can be very powerful to them.
• 04:03- [Blake] When you come in every day and you're able
• 04:04to actually see on paper that you're improving,
• 04:08definitely helps with the mental side of things
• 04:10and makes the process a little bit easier.
• 04:14- [Colleen] We wanna give them a new skill set to be able
• 04:16to go back to do what they want to do.
• 04:19We can't make them better, they make themselves better.
• 04:24Being able to see them do that is fantastic.
• 04:28- I was working towards being confident again.
• 04:32In myself and who I was and also
• 04:36what I had the ability to do.
• 04:38- [Blake] Where at one point it was something
• 04:40that I would think about for entire games,
• 04:42now it's something that doesn't even come to mind
• 04:44when I'm playing and I can play more free
• 04:45and it's definitely a lot more fun that way.
• 04:49- [Erin] I was just so excited to get back out there
• 04:52and just do the one thing
• 04:54that I've been striving to do for so long.
• 04:57- [Dr. Gardner] As an athlete, for many of us,
• 04:58it remains a part of your identity
• 05:00really for the rest of your life.
• 05:02I was fortunate enough to have many people there
• 05:04helping me during my athletic career.
• 05:07And so to now be able to give that back to my patients,
• 05:10to be able to help them, is incredibly fulfilling.
• 05:14- Orthopedic surgery in general tends to be
• 05:15very reactionary, meaning somebody has an injury or trauma
• 05:19and we react to that and try to help them through that.
• 05:22- [Dr. Gardner] What's exciting is what we're now able to do
• 05:24to try to both prevent as well as treat injuries early
• 05:29so that they don't get to the point
• 05:30of needing to have a surgery.
• 05:32That's where things like the biologic treatments,
• 05:36stem cells and PRP are very exciting in their ability to use
• 05:41and harness the body's own healing factors
• 05:44to be able to heal injuries that in the past we've treated
• 05:47by simply telling you to take off six or eight weeks.
• 05:52It's very important to be able to make sure that we have
• 05:54not only the important biologic aspects
• 05:57of the injury in mind, but also the specifics of
• 05:59what the patient is looking for after their recovery
• 06:03to make sure that everybody's achieved their goals.