Mike Squirrell Sports Injury and Sports Medicine Clinic Harley Street. Look no further for sports injury care and treatment.
Sport Injury
Sports injuries are injuries that occur to athletes in major sporting events. In many cases, these types of injuries are due to overuse of a part of the body when participating in a certain activity. For example, runner's knee is a painful condition generally associated with running, while tennis elbow is a form of repetitive stress injury at the elbow, although it does often occur with tennis players. Other types of injuries can be caused by a hard contact with something. This can often cause a broken bone or torn ligament or tendon
Injuries are a common occurrence in professional sports and most teams have a staff of Athletic Trainers and close connections to the medical community. Controversy has arisen at times when teams have made decisions that could threaten a players long-term health for short term gain.
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Treating Sports Injuries
Sports injuries can be broadly classified as either traumatic or overuse injuries. Traumatic injuries account for most injuries in contact sports such as Football, Rugby, Australian rules football, Gaelic football and American football because of the dynamic and high collision nature of these sports. These injuries range from bruises and muscle strains, to fractures and head injuries.
A bruise or contusion is damage to small blood vessels which causes bleeding within the tissues. A muscle strain is a small tear of muscle fibers and a ligament sprain is a small tear of ligament tissue. The body’s response to these sports injuries is the same in the initial five day period immediately following the traumatic incident - inflammation.
All of these traumatic injuries cause damage to the cells that make up the soft tissues. The dead and damaged cells release chemicals, which initiate an inflammatory response. Small blood vessels are damaged and opened up, producing bleeding within the tissue. In the body’s normal reaction, a small blood clot is formed in order to stop this bleeding and from this clot special cells (called fibroblasts) begin the healing process by laying down scar tissue.
The inflammatory stage is therefore the first phase of healing. However, too much of an inflammatory response in the early stage can mean that the healing process takes longer and a return to activity is delayed. The sports injury treatments are intended to minimize the inflammatory phase of an injury, so that the overall healing process is accelerated.
Inflammation is characterized by pain, localized swelling, heat, redness and a loss of function. The inflammatory stage typically lasts around 5 days and all treatment during this time is designed to address the cardinal signs of inflammation – pain, swelling, redness, heat and a loss of function.
Sports injuries can be treated and managed by using the P.R.I.C.E.R and T.O.T.A.P.S regimes:
* P - Protect
* R - Rest
* I - Ice
* C - Compression
* E - Elevation
* R - Referral
* T - Talk
* O - Observe
* T - Touch
* A - Active movement
* P - Passive movement
* S - Skills test
Compression sportswear is becoming very popular with both professional and amateur athletes. These garments are thought to both reduce the risk of muscle injury and speed up muscle recovery.
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Sports Medicine Harley Street
"Sports Medicine Harley Street at Mike Squirrell Physiotherapy and Sports Injury Clinic"
Sports medicine specializes in preventing, diagnosing and treating injuries related to participating in sports and/or exercise, specifically the rotation or deformation of joints or muscles caused by engaging in such physical activities. The sports medicine "team" includes specialty physicians and surgeons, athletic trainers, physical therapists, coaches, other personnel, as well as the athlete himself/herself. Because of the competitive nature of sports, a primary focus of sports medicine is the rapid recovery of patients, which drives many innovations in the field.
Sports medicine has always been difficult to define because it is not a single specialty, but an area that involves health care professionals, researchers and educators from a wide variety of disciplines. Its function is not only curative and rehabilitative, but especially preventive.
Despite this wide scope, there has been a tendency for many to assume that sport-related problems are by default musculoskeletal and that sports medicine is an orthopaedic specialty. There is much more to sports medicine than just musculoskeletal diagnosis and treatment. Illness or injury in sport can be caused by many factors – from environmental to physiological and psychological. Consequently, sports medicine can encompass an array of specialties, including cardiology, pulmonology, rehabilitation medicine, orthopaedic surgery, nutrition, dentistry, opthamology, exercise physiology, biomechanics, and traumatology. For example, heat, cold or altitude during training and competition can alter performance or may even be life threatening. The female athlete triad of disordered eating, menstrual disturbances, and bone density problems, and the problems of pregnant or aging athletes demand knowledge from many diverse fields. In addition, the management of endocrinological diseases and other such problems in the athlete demands both medical expertise and sport-specific knowledge.
The use of supplements, pharmacological or otherwise, and the topics of doping control and gender verification present complex moral, legal and health-related difficulties. Further unique problems are associated with international sporting events, such as the effects of travel and acclimatization, and the attempt to balance an athlete's participation with his or her health. Much of this draws on new fields of study, in which extensive clinical and basic science research is burgeoning.
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Courtesy of Wikipedia/Sports Injury
Mike Squirrell Sports Injury Clinic at 1 Harley Street have years of hands on physical experience of diagnosing and successfully treating sports injuries through proven practices of sport medicine.
Treating athletes for sport injuries i.e running, triathalon, decathlon, marathons as well as the general public.
All health insurance including BUPA, AXA/PPP cover our treatments. X/Ray, MRI and GP/Specialist referral can be arranged immediately if required.