#AMSSM14

#AMSSM14 is the tag to follow on Twitter the next few days if you want to stay on top of what is topical in the world of sports medicine.  The American Medical Society for Sports Medicine (AMSSM) is having its 2014 annual meeting in New Orleans these next several days.  #AMSSM14 began Friday and is continuing through Wednesday.  It’s already been a rich experience, one we’ve been looking forward to for a while.

Happy conference attendees, Drs. Jane Sando and Natalie Stork.

Among the speakers who have already graced the podium:  David Epstein, a journalist and author of The Sports Gene, gave a great keynote speech Sunday on some of the factors that go into the ‘making’ of an elite athlete.  He presented a compelling argument for avoiding early sport specialization, allowing the youth athlete to sample and perhaps find the sport that ‘fits’ his or her unique physical attributes.  The talk was the perfect prelude to the afternoon’s sessions, ‘From Best Practices to Burnout,’ a series of lectures on how sports medicine clinicians might best guide youth athletes and families as they work their way through the North American sport system.

Dr. John DiFiori, the outgoing AMSSM president and lead author on the statement on youth sport specialization and burnout we published in January, spoke at length about the findings of that systematic review.  In case you missed the lecture and/or are elsewhere than New Orleans this weekend, take a look at our ‘5 Questions with CJSM’ interview with Dr. DiFiori.  Dr. Tracy Ray discussed ‘Patient Centered Care’ of the collegiate athlete that I particularly enjoyed.   The focus was the InterAssociation Consensus Statement on Best Practices for Sports Medicine Management for Secondary Schools and Colleges.

I already have my eye on a series of ‘point/counterpoint’ discussions tomorrow morning:  contact sport: should it be embraced or avoided? Spondylolysis:  to brace or not to brace? And vitamin D:  to screen and treat or not?  I’ll be there and I’ll be sure to be tweeting the high points of those sessions.

I think it’s a testament to the quality of the sessions that I am sitting in a large auditorium at 5 pm on a weekend day here in New Orleans…..and it’s nearly full!  Great to see folks want to hear about positive and negative likelihood ratios rather than enjoying the temptations of Bourbon street…..well, at least for an hour more perhaps!

Follow us on @cjsmonline, follow the AMSSM on @TheAMSSM, and follow the hashtag #AMSSM14 for all the info coming hot off the press from this conference!!