A Sports Medicine Specialist Can Also Treat The General Population

by

Aloysius Aucoin

Sports medicine and the specialists who inhabit this field do more than just treat professional athletes. Even though the field started out as a specific subset of orthopedics it has grown far beyond those early boundaries. The highly skilled professionals that are a part of this field are involved in not only treating and healing injuries but also in the fields of nutrition, psychology, training, and coaching. The common goal of all of these disciplines is to prevent injuries, enhance performance, teach proper training techniques, and develop proper mental attitudes. All of these principles have a common goal and that is to get the absolute best possible performance out of the athlete. The other goal is to prevent injuries and optimize a healthy lifestyle.

Because of the increased activity of the general population this service has now crept into the consciousness of the public. This is due not only to the increased activity and life styles of adults but also the added increase and participation in extra curricular activities by school aged children and teens. These activities include the obvious ones such as football, baseball and basketball but can also include other school-sponsored programs such as cheerleading. In fact the utilization of sports medicine professionals by the public is so prevalent that many orthopedic surgeons will never see a professional athlete over their entire career. The reason for this is that these particular specialists receive additional training and skills do deal with traumatic injuries that are very common outside the athletic arena. These traumas include ligament and bone injuries, shoulder cuff injuries, ACL tearing or bruising and shoulder instability. They are popular with the public because their extra training gives them a better success rate handling the treatment and healing of a patient with these problems.

Another factor that drives the use of sports medicine specialists by the public is that most active people have a certain expectation that they should be able to quickly return to not only their careers but also their active lifestyles after sustaining an injury. This expectation is a major part of the reason that sports medicine has risen to the prominence it enjoys with the public today.

Unfortunately these more common injuries are being upstaged by a serious problem that not only plagues professional athletes and the general population but also the armed forces in this country. That problem is head injury and brain concussion. Today the number one injury in not only athletics but in also many kinds of trauma is head injury and brain concussion. Prior to current studies that highlighted this fact mild concussion was not considered a major concern. However this attitude has completely changed and it is now recognized that head injury and concussion are the number one cause of many easily preventable problems that crop up later in life and are directly linked to a concussion event.

Because of this sports medicine training now includes extensive education in detecting and treating head injury and concussions of all kinds with the goal of eliminating age related problems whose root cause was the head injury.

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A Sports Medicine Specialist Can Also Treat The General Population