Pediatric Sports Medicine Podcast

  We are back with our first episode of 2022. Omicron has been running rampant throughout the world. It’s been a busy month away from the podcast for me. The PRiSM meeting is now underway. Unfortunately, I am under work-related travel restrictions so I am unable to join my colleagues in person, but I was fortunate enough to grab a few from our Concussion Research Interest Group to discuss some rec...

  We are approaching a little over a month away until the annual PRiSM Society meeting to be held in Houston, Texas. If you aren’t familiar with PRiSM, but listen to this podcast, let me clue you in. This is a great organization to be a part of. PRiSM stands for Pediatric Research in Sports Medicine and is composed of individuals who are interested in research in pediatric sports medicine. This wi...

  If your sports medicine practice is like mine or if you are an athletic trainer in the training room, you probably get a bunch of kids coming in with the presumptive diagnosis of a jammed finger. I don’t think my final diagnosis has ever been a jammed finger, but we use that term loosely with finger and hand injuries. It’s equivalent to the shin splints diagnosis of the legs. A term that’s used...

  High school sports: I have fond memories of my 4 years as a cross country runner, the 3 years in track, and my one protest year of playing high school tennis when my school changed coaches for our distance team in track. I have lifelong friendships with several of those teammates and those activities inspired me to be interested in running as a sport I have been able to continue in as I approach...

  It seems in my office the default diagnosis by many health care professionals and patients presenting with lower leg pain with exertion is shin splints. It’s an easy thing to fall back on as it’s a common problem, but certainly not the only problem that causes exertional lower leg pain. I’ve had a special interest in exertional leg pain in runners and one problem I specialize in is exertional co...

  When rehabbing an athlete after an injury or surgery, there are lots of protocols that are out there and tools at the disposal of the physical therapist and athletic trainer. It can get overwhelming sometimes, especially for those of us as physicians who are diagnosing the problem but aren’t actual doing the rehab. I’m not sure if it’s me but it seems like in the last decade, compared to the fir...

  The media… it can be a love/hate relationship at times. We see a new publication talking about a medical breakthrough sensationalized in the media and our patients may get the wrong impression of what the impact really is. A perfect example of this was when the ‘concussion blood test’ approval by the FDA became news. Unfortunately, this was not correctly messaged and my response to it on social...

  We are 18 months into the COVID-19 pandemic. Just about a year ago we had an episode trying to gauge what would happen with fall sports. To date, it has been the most downloaded episode of this podcast. As we see surges continue to happen around the country and around the world as the Delta variant spreads, we thought it would be a good idea to revisit where we are, lessons learned – or not lear...

  We have seen a lot in recent years that seems to be polarizing this country. More than I have ever witnessed in my nearly half century on this planet. In the last few years, an area that seems to be growing in its polarization in the world of sports is how to approach a transgender athlete, particularly from the standpoint of participation. It’s easy for any of us to rush to a conclusion as to w...

  We are back with another Research Review Episode of the Pediatric Sports Medicine Podcast. Today we are going to cover a sport near and dear to my heart…cross country running. I have two experts on my podcast today to cover three articles in the world of running.   The Pediatric Sports Medicine Podcast Links Bar:  Subscribe via Apple Podcasts |  Subscribe via RSS Feed |  Facebook Page |  Twitter...

  Many young athletes who play the sport of football have dreams and aspirations of playing in the NFL someday. Whether those dreams and aspirations are realistic or not is a different story. I could easily go through the statistics of the continually shrinking odds of the success rates of moving from high school to college to the NFL; it’s kind of depressing if you really look at it if you are ho...

Athletes sustain all sorts of musculoskeletal injuries. I’d put good money that most athletic trainers and sports medicine physicians feel pretty comfortable evaluating an ankle, knee or shoulder. But what happens when the trauma is to the abdomen? How confident do you feel in identifying something that may be brewing to one of the internal organs in the abdomen? Today on the podcast we will cover...

Sports medicine professionals interact with athletes daily, many of whom have some underlying mental health issue. Commonly this may be anxiety or depression. We know that many athletes don’t feel comfortable disclosing their mental health issues or concerns or often they may go undiagnosed for long periods of time. They can affect athletic performance and the symptoms of many mental health issues...

We continue our series during Mental Health Awareness Month discussing mental health issues facing athletes. Think that professional athletes have it all together and there aren’t any pressures? How about if you make the Olympics for your sport? Everything will be great from there on out, right? It’s easy to walk away. No pressures…..well maybe not the case. How can an athlete still make an impact...

Injuries can be devastating to an athlete of any age. It typically means loss in many respects… of goals, dreams, aspirations, normal physical activity, interaction with teammates and just being part of a team. Over the years, many tears have been shed in sports medicine offices over a diagnosis that results in that loss. But where does the athlete go from there. What supports do they have? Is the...

It’s time for another Research Review on the Pediatric Sports Medicine Podcast. Today we tackle the shoulder. We’ll review 3 articles covering shoulder instability bracing, clavicle fractures and the effectiveness of a throwers injury prevention program. Time to dive in to the medical literature.   The Pediatric Sports Medicine Podcast Links Bar: Connect with the Host: [saf facebook="https://www.f...

When we talk about sports medicine, we think about injuries to all sorts of structures in our body…the muscles and tendons, ligaments, bones, the brain…..but what about your teeth? You’ve all seen professional hockey players with their jack-o-lantern type smiles as a badge of honor. What do we need to be thinking about in sports with our teeth and how can we protect your pearly whites? Today on th...

We are nearing the end of March 2021. It is Brain Injury Awareness Month but certainly not to be overlooked, it’s also National Athletic Training Month. I’ve said it before that I don’t think it’s a coincidence, given that the important role our athletic trainers take in concussion awareness, education, diagnosis and management that both athletic training and brain injury awareness are featured in...

  Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy, otherwise known as CTE, is a major topic when talking about the spectrum of things related to brain injury in sports. From its first descriptions in 1928 by Dr. Harrison Martland when coining the term “Punch Drunk Syndrome” to its portrayal in the movie “Concussion” with Will Smith starring as pathologist Dr. Bennet Omalu, many now have concerns about the effect...

It’s March and that means it’s Brain Injury Awareness Month. It’s easy for many of us to see the many patients who come into our practices or we evaluate on the sidelines and help guide them through their evaluation and recovery from their concussion. But as a pediatric sports physician who has a huge interest in concussions, I would be remiss to not acknowledge the significance of this month for...

There is a lot of equipment out there we use with our young athletes to hopefully reduce the risk of injury. Some is required for a particular sport, although some athletes and families just purchase things on their own to use. But does the protective equipment do what is intended? How about protective equipment and its role in reducing the risk of concussion? Today on the podcast, I’m going to be...

If you do any sort of sports medicine, you’ve heard of the meniscus, that shock absorber between the bones in the knee. Do you know what a discoid meniscus is? Why is this even important when discussing young athletes? Today on the podcast, we discuss the discoid meniscus, something that may have seen you but you may not have seen it... yet.   The Pediatric Sports Medicine Podcast Links Bar: Conne...

It’s 2021. CoVID-19 is still here. We amazingly have a vaccine out and I’m so thankful and grateful to the scientists who worked tirelessly to get it out and to have had the opportunity to be a recipient of the vaccine. But despite these advances, cases, hospitalizations and deaths have continued to surge. We’ve seen Children’s Hospitals once again being used for overflow for adult patients being...

Did you know that when you think of the words MOON and MARS, they actually have a meaning outside of our celestial bodies in the sky? You probably never even equated those couple of words to sports medicine. If you have not, you should, especially if you see young athletes with ACL tears. My two guests today helped to create the MOON and MARS multicenter research groups. We’ll talk about how these...

Have you heard of PRISM? I’m not talking about A prism, the geometric shape, but the sports medicine organization PRISM. If you haven’t, you’ll want to listen in as this has become a very important organization in the world of pediatric sports medicine providing an opportunity for increased collaboration of sports medicine professionals and moving forward research in pediatric sports medicine. Not...