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A top orthopedic surgeon in the country is calling sports injuries in kids an epidemic. Dr. James Andrews started a national campaign trying to keep children and teens out of the doctors office.
Teaming with the renown surgeon are other doctors and high-profile athletes, including former Cardinal John Smoltz and possible future Ram Sam Bradford. Both have suffered major injuries in their careers, so they want to prevent young athletes from the same type of pain.
The campaign is called STOP sports injuries. Dr. Andrews says people need to be more educated on how to prevent injuries.
by Stephanie Smith
CNN
February 5, 2010
For more than 20 years, former San Francisco 49ers lineman George Visger has lived his life out of hundreds of small yellow notebooks. In them he scrawls the minutiae of his daily life: "4:45 am left house. 2 stops to find coffee and a roll. Paper work till 9:25. 10:05 Ed called."
The notebooks are the last vestige of his memory.
"I always have them. They sit in my back pockets," said Visger, 51. "The movie '50 First Dates,' this has been my life for 28 years. I get up in the morning and I have no clue what I have to do that day. If it's not written down it doesn't exist."
Visger said his memory began fading in 1982. During his brief, injury-shortened career playing for the 49ers, he said, a jarring tackle caused a concussion.
by Tina Szybisty
Ann Arbor Health News - Examiner.com
February 2, 2010
ACL stands for Anterior Cruciate Ligament and it links the femur (large bone in upper leg) to the tibia (bones in lower leg) by running crosswise inside the center of the knee joint. The ACL is one of four ligaments that help stabilize knee movement.
As recently reported on WXYZ news, these types of injuries are on the rise in youth girls (as much as eight times more than males). They tend to be caused by pivoting movements and landing from a jump.
According to the CDC (Centers for Disease Control), "nearly 30,000 girls age 19 and younger suffered ACL injuries that required surgical repair in 2006." It's felt that girls are not equipped for the vigorous training that is often expected of them at this age because their bodies are building fat while boys are building muscle. This is due to the nature of their hormones; testosterone vs. estrogen. Girls bodies are building fat stores around the crucial, growing reproductive organs and her ligaments become more relaxed and therefore, more susceptible to injury.
It's also felt that a girl's wider pelvic structure causes a steeper angle on the connecting ligaments in this area.
by Kay Lazar
Boston GLobe
February 2, 2010
There was the nasty concussion Ben Price suffered from an eighth-grade skiing accident. Then the countless jarrings from wrestling and baseball. By senior year, he was plagued by nagging headaches after football practices at Wayland High School.
His mother, Wendy Price, did not connect the incidents until a chance conversation last year with another parent at a youth soccer game. That parent, Dr. Ann McKee, is studying a form of early dementia that was once thought to develop primarily in boxers. Now McKee and her colleagues think the disease may be silently destroying the brains of athletes in a variety of sports after years of repetitive blows to the head.
"You don't know who is going to be the unlucky one,'' said Price, who asked McKee to speak at a forum in Wayland.
by Matthew Ondesko
Metro Western New York
January 28, 2010
When playing a sport like hockey everybody knows injuries are part of the game. A player can deal with a broken finger or a sprained ankle every once and awhile. But, what players of all ages are having a hard time dealing with is concussions.
Concussions are becoming a big part of the game - especially now that the players are bigger and faster and the equipment is also better.
"The game has evolved," stated former National Hockey League great Mark Messier. "Players are bigger, stronger, faster. Equipment is more sophisticated and the playing area has changed. It is a chain of events over time that has led to where we are today. The evolution of the equipment is the factor."
ABC News 11At least a half-dozen states are considering measures that would toughen restrictions on young athletes returning to play after head injuries, inspired by individual cases and the attention the issue has received in the NFL.
Washington state led the way last year, passing what is considered the nation's strongest return-to-play statute. Athletes under 18 who show concussion symptoms can't take the field again without a licensed health care provider's written approval. Several other states, including California and Pennsylvania, have similar bills pending.
NBC 16 - WNDU
South Bend, IN
by Stephanie Stang
If you're a parent, there's a good chance your child plays sports. But how hard do they play, and for how many hours a week?
Studies show too many children are pushing themselves too hard at too young an age.
A growing number of children are suffering from sports injuries.
After nine-year-old Eric Williams is done with football practice, one foot hurts.
by Hannah Sampson
hsampson@MiamiHerald.com
October 6, 2009
Shauna Davis dances every day, all styles. The teenager has been dancing since she was 3 -- and suffering the aches and pains that go along with it.
High school freshman Jeremy Moss has also been involved in sports since age 3 -- in basketball and soccer, adding football when he was 6. This spring, the 14-year-old started therapy after having surgery on his left knee.
The teens were among the first young athletes to undergo rehabilitative care at a new 5,665-square foot pediatric rehabilitation center in Southwest Broward, called [U18] Sports Medicine.
THE LOS ANGELES TIMES
October 5, 2009
With traumatic brain injury rampant among troops overseas, the military is taking a page from sports -- discovering ways to better diagnose and treat it.
Last month, when University of Southern California wide receiver Garrett Green bobbled the football on a key play against Washington State, red flags went up among the Trojans' athletic trainers on the sidelines. Only minutes before, Green had tackled an opponent -- hard -- on a kickoff return. His sudden lack of coordination struck team trainer Russ Romano as a pretty likely sign of concussion.
Romano called Green to the sidelines, asked him a few quick questions and got back answers confused enough to take the senior from Chatsworth out of the game. The next day, Green took a battery of cognitive tests to check for concussion symptoms. When they showed some lingering effects of injury, the 19-year-old was ordered to sit out practice for at least a week. After that, Romano told Green, he could be reassessed for a return to the field.
As high school and college football practices begin in the summer heat, it has become especially important to monitor health and the effects of heat stroke, according to a report on catastrophic injuries in sports released Tuesday.
Increases in football-related deaths because of heat stroke is one of the most concerning issues raised in the 25th version of the report, issued by the National Center for Catastrophic Sports Injury Research based at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Dr. Frederick O. Mueller, who wrote the report, examined "catastrophic injuries" -- defined as fatalities, non-fatalities with permanent severe functional disability, or serious injuries with no permanent functional disability -- in high school and college sports.
Rachel Ullrich
June 26, 2009
© Copyright 2009, The News & Observer Publishing Company
IRVINE, CA,- The National Cheer Safety Foundation (NCSF) panel of experts, a collaborative effort of the nation's top sports medicine and safety leaders are calling on Congress to review injury study findings in cheerleading and youth sports. June 30, 2009
Copyright © 2004-2009 24-7 Press Release.com
Dan Peterson
12 June 2009
Live Science
At a recent baseball game, the 12-year-old second baseman on my son's team had a ground ball take a nasty hop, hitting him just next to his right eye. He was down on the field for several minutes and was later diagnosed at the hospital with a concussion.
Thankfully, acute baseball injuries like this are on the decline, according to a new report. However, several leading physicians say overuse injuries of young players caused by too much baseball show no signs of slowing down.
New guidelines for the care of youth athletes who sustain concussions are causing controversy among brain-injury experts, reigniting the debate over whether strict rules regarding concussions can actually leave athletes at greater risk for injury.
An international panel of neurologists, updating their recommendations on concussion care in the May issue of The British Journal of Sports Medicine, said that any athlete 18 or younger who was believed to have sustained a concussion during a game or practice should never be allowed to return to the playing field the same day. The group had previously said that such athletes could return if cleared by a doctor or certified athletic trainer, but now contend that such determinations are too difficult and dangerous for same-day return to be considered safe.
Alan Schwarz
6-8-09
New York Times
by Fred Bowen
The Washington Post
May 25, 2009
I recently read a new book called "Until It Hurts: America's Obsession With Youth Sports and How It Harms Our Kids," written by Baltimore sportswriter Mark Hyman. It is not a kids' book, but it's about kids' sports. Hyman argues that some adults -- parents included -- take youth sports too seriously, and that can spoil the fun for kids.
Here are some of the things I learned from the book that kids and their parents should know.
Overuse injuries from kids playing their sports too much at an early age are way up. They include sore ankles and knees from playing soccer or basketball year-round and sore elbows from pitching too much.
Lyle Micheli, a sports doctor in Boston, estimates that in the early 1990s, 20 percent of the injuries to kids he treated were from overuse. Now, he estimates, 75 percent are from overuse. Micheli says overuse injuries could be cut to almost zero if coaches and parents would simply let kids: (1) play a variety of sports; (2) take it easier; and (3) rest a day or two from sports every week.
Hyman tells the story of Whitney Phelps, an older sister of Michael Phelps, the Olympic gold-medal swimmer. Whitney was a great swimmer, maybe as good as her famous brother, but she never made the Olympics. She swam too much too soon, and she got hurt.
So if you are a kid who plays soccer or baseball in the spring and fall, maybe you should try another sport for summer camp.
SEATTLE -- Zackery Lystedt's cause has become Washington law.
The state now has what advocates say is the nation's toughest law regulating when high school athletes can return to games after having sustained a concussion. The legislation signed Thursday in Olympia by Gov. Chris Gregoire prohibits athletes under 18, who are suspected of sustaining a concussion, from returning to play without a licensed health care provider's written approval.
It is named after a 16-year-old in Maple Valley who suffered a life-threatening brain injury in 2006 after he returned to play football following a concussion.
"It's the first of its kind in the country which mandates that youth athletes who sustain a concussion cannot come back to play without the written consent of a doctor or provider," said Rep. Jay Rodne, R-North Bend, whom Lystedt's family contacted for help.
Gregg Bell
May 19, 2009
The Associated Press
by Sue Shellenbarger
Wall Street Journal
May 19, 2009
We've posted before on injuries in youth sports. As summer teams start up, you'll be hearing more about one kind of injury in particular: Knee damage in girls.
Two professional groups, one of surgeons and the other of athletic trainers, are fielding an educational campaign on the prevalence of knee injuries among girls. Tears to the ACL, or the anterior cruciate ligament in the knee, are eight times more likely in girls than in boys, research shows. Doctors hypothesize that physiological differences between girls and boys, such as weaker hamstring muscles that reduce the stability of the knee joint, or estrogen that leads to weaker ligaments, are factors.
The educational campaign comes amid rising questions about the pressures on young athletes. Mark Hyman, author of a book on the topic, says he regrets having supported his son in pitching so long and hard in high-school baseball that he injured his arm, forcing surgery and a permanent setback. And recent research on 5,000 promising football players shows high-school and college injuries haunt pro players for years.
QUINCY -- A recent report showing the lifelong damage concussions inflict on young athletes' brains should prompt schools and youth sports leagues to establish uniform guidelines on how coaches and game officials respond when one occurs.
It should also move the same groups to consider what rules can be changed to lessen the chance of such injuries.
A study being conducted by Boston University's medical school and the Sports Legacy Institute in Waltham recently announced that a trauma-induced brain disease previously thought only to effect career athletes was detected in the brain of an 18-year-old football player.
The disease, chronic traumatic encephalopathy, can initially cause memory impairment, emotional instability, erratic behavior, depression or loss of impulse control before developing into Alzheimer's-like dementia.
Feb 17, 2009
The Patriot Ledger
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