AAP Council on Sports Medicine and Fitness Blog

Link: http://chicagosports.chicagotribune.com/sports/highschool/cs-080531-illinois-high-school-temkin,0,1660538.column

An article from the Chicago Tribune focusing on a new book about the early specialization in youth sports.

Link: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24842630

AP article on possibility that obesity epidemic has peaked. Dr. Reginald Washington is featured in article.

Here is the latest of top case. Appears to have truly been a fx rather than fragmentation.

These are the cases I expressed on the listserv. See what you think.

Magazine Preview
The Uneven Playing Field

BY THE TIME JANELLE PIERSON SPRINTED ONTO THE FIELD for the start of the Florida high-school soccer playoffs in January, she had competed in hundreds of games since joining her first team at 5. She played soccer year-round — often for two teams at a time when the seasons of her school and club teams overlapped. Like many American children deeply involved in sports, Janelle, a high-school senior, had traveled like a professional athlete since her early teens, routinely flying to out-of-state tournaments.

Highlights sports specialization, ACL injuries and gender differences, and quotes Becky Demorest, MD, Council on Sports Medicine and Fitness AAP.

See http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/11/magazine/11Girls-t.html?hp for link to article.

Testing the waters
Heads up: A three-part series on concussion in youth sport
Jim Donnelly by Jim Donnelly (March 10, 2008)

Ottawa Sport Science approach to concussion management hightlighted in this article.

Cumberland Panthers’ head trainer Angel Charron says that while she can’t stop a concussion from occurring on the field, she can certainly do her darndest to prevent them.
That’s why the 15-year veteran of the east-end football club administers what she calls a DSST, or digit symbol substitution test – that is, a series of trials which helps to determine an athlete’s susceptibility to concussion – at the start of each season.

“Every kid is tested (at the beginning of the season),” she says. The test, similar versions of which are used by other clubs and school teams in Canada and the U.S., was developed by the Ottawa Sports Science Center and involves a series of hand-eye coordination and cognitive tests.

See http://www.eastottawa.ca/article-191521-Testing-the-waters.html for more details.

Link: http://www.forbes.com/forbeslife/health/feeds/hscout/2008/03/10/hscout613336.html

Don’t know if this has been published yet but useful information for all of us.

MONDAY, March 10 (HealthDay News) – During on-field treatment of young athletes with suspected neck injuries, both helmet and shoulder pads should be kept on for initial stabilization and transport, and removed when the patient is in a controlled setting, a new study finds.
“There was a clear hole in the on-the-field guidelines in the treatment of young (8 to 14 year olds) contact and collision sports athletes with possible neck injuries,” first author Dr. Gehron Treme, former sports medicine fellow at the University of Virginia, and now with the Center for Orthopaedics in Lake Charles, La., said in a prepared statement.

“Skeletal proportions are different in children than adults. Kids have larger heads than torsos. With this study, we looked to see if this disproportion would result in a different recommendation, such as removing the helmet only. Our study found, however, just as is the case with adults, that both the helmet and shoulder pads should be left on for initial treatment and removed as a unit once the patient is stabilized,” Treme said.

In their study, Treme and principle investigator Dr. David Diduch, professor and team physician at the University of Virginia, took X-rays of 31 boys, ages 8 to 14, lying down wearing shoulder pads only, wearing a helmet and shoulder pads, and wearing no equipment. The researchers then measured the alignment of the head, neck and spine to determine if the head tipped back, which could lead to further damage in the case of a neck injury.

The researchers concluded there was no statistically significant difference in alignment when the boys wore no equipment and when they wore both helmet and shoulder pads. However, wearing shoulder pads alone resulted in unacceptable alignment changes that could put a patient at risk if the helmet alone was removed.

While rare, neck injuries suffered by youngsters who play contact sports such as football, ice hockey and lacrosse can be catastrophic, Treme noted.

“Although these events are uncommon, they can be tragic. The initial treatment, usually within the first 10 minutes, is critical to how the patient will do in the long term. The goal, of course, is to avoid paralysis or neurological damage,” Treme said.

The study was presented March 8 in San Francisco at the American Orthopaedic Society for Sports Medicine Specialty Da

Link: http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=device-helps-fat-kids-cut

CHICAGO (Reuters) - A monitoring device that cut TV and computer time in half helped young, overweight children eat less and lose weight, U.S. researchers said on Monday.

And it worked without creating a lot of conflict between parents and their kids, they said.

“It reduces all of those battles. The parents have to make one decision. After they make the decision, the device does the rest,” said Leonard Epstein of the University at Buffalo, the State University of New York, whose study appears in the Archives of Pediatric & Adolescent Medicine.