The CJSM podcast on the pediatric athlete — Guest Editor Dr. M. Alison Brooks

September 13, 2019 by

Dr. Alison Brooks, in a rare moment of repose — enjoying the sights from Table Mountain, Cape Town RSA

We have just published our September 2019 issue.  It is a special thematic issue focused on the pediatric and adolescent athlete, and we are grateful to Guest Editor Alison Brooks M.D., M.P.H. for the outstanding work she has done nurturing this issue from cradle to…..adulthood.

It’s been a long process watching this issue proceed from crawling to toddling to, now, standing on it’s own two feet marching off into the world!

Want to know more about pediatric sport specialization, concussion, nutrition, safe play?  Want to know more about the rigors and work involved with a guest editorship?  It’s time then to queue up your smart phones and listen to our newest podcast, where Dr. Brooks makes her debut as our guest.

I have known Dr. Brooks for several years and consider her a friend.  As a friend as well as a professional colleague, I am duly impressed with her career.  And you should be, too. An Assoc. Professor on the tenure track at the University of Wisconsin, she has published widely and can be found in the pages of CJSM as well as many other journals. A former member of the AMSSM’s Board of Directors, Dr. Brooks continues to influence youth athletic policy with her work for the AAP’s Council on Sports Medicine and Fitness.  And I know her best as the person I accompanied on the AMSSM’s Travelling Fellowship in South Africa in 2015.

Spend 20 minutes finding out more about the medical challenges facing our young athletes and learning a bit more about Dr. Brooks.  Go to our podcasts now at iTunes or our journal’s main web page.

Filed under CJSM Podcasts, Youth Sport Tagged with ,

Prescribed Exercise for Managing Concussions — the CJSM Blog Journal Club

September 3, 2019 by

Our Editor-in-Chief Chris Hughes (R) and Jr. Assoc. Editor Jason Zaremski (L) taking a brief spell from their busy lives.

Our fifth edition of the year went live at the beginning of September, and it’s a special one:  we have devoted the entire issue to the theme of pediatric athletes.

Our guest editor Alison Brooks M.D., M.P.H. has assembled an impressive line up of authors, including John Leddy M.D. of SUNY Buffalo who is the lead on an interesting new study demonstrating the benefits of prescribed aerobic exercise in the recovery of adolescent males from sport-related concussion.

Our Jr. Assoc. Editor Jason Zaremski M.D. has submitted another insightful journal club piece looking at the details of Dr. Leddy’s study.

As fall approaches in the Northern Hemisphere, and spring in the Southern, sports-related concussions will continue to show up in a variety of sports our young athletes play.  This work from Dr. Leddy et al. (including both this new study and his CJSM 2018 study) will be transformative in the way we manage our athletes.

Enjoy the original research paper itself (here) and the journal club article (below).

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Jason Zaremski M.D., Junior Associate Editor CJSM

Title:

Leddy JJ, et al. A Preliminary Study of the Effect of Early Aerobic Exercise Treatment for Sport-Related Concussion in Males. Clin J Sport Med 2019 29(5):353-360.

Introduction:  

As the temperature begins to change and we enter the fall season, millions of student-athletes have returned to school and sport. With such large participation numbers in sport inevitably comes a rise in injury. One of these injuries is sports related concussions (SRC). In recent years, our overall knowledge of how to diagnose, manage, and treat SRC has improved thanks to the ever-growing research in this area. However, one aspect that is continuing to evolve is the timing and intensity of physical activity after sustaining a SRC. While rest (cognitive and physical) has been a mainstay of treatment in the past, there is a growing body of research that indicates physical activity may accelerate recovery versus physical rest only. Thus, it is our pleasure to provide this month’s CJSM Journal Club by reviewing Leddy and colleagues’ new work on the effects of early aerobic exercise as a potential treatment for SRC in adolescent males.

Purpose/Hypothesis(es):

The primary purposes of this research is to compare early subthreshold aerobic exercise (STAE) versus prescribed rest and days to recovery from concussion for adolescent males. The authors hypothesized that STAE would reduce the days to recovery after treatment prescription. Read more of this post

Filed under Concussion in Sport, Exercise Medicine, Journal Club, Physical activity interventions, Youth Sport