Rugby 7’s

January 22, 2014 by 1 Comment

Rugbyball2

Looking forward to some sport
and some sun this weekend.

As I write, it’s early in the morning on another cold day here in the eastern half of the United States.  The “Polar Vortex” has descended again and I think colleagues in places like New York City and Philadelphia may be enjoying a ‘snow day’ today.

But if there are not an associated ‘blizzard’ of plane flight cancellations, I should be enjoying some balmy weather by tomorrow:  I’m heading to the USA Sports Medicine Rugby Conference and International Rugby 7’s tournament in Las Vegas.

As I had mentioned in my previous post about the upcoming FIMS/CASEM conference in June, among the many very interesting speakers headlining the USA Rugby event in Vegas:  Rob Cantu will be talking about “Short Term and Long Term Results of Repetitive Sub-Concussive and Concussive Head Injury” and Ann McKee will discuss “Emerging Concepts in Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy” (CTE).

I’ll get a chance to listen to some great panelists and moderate some sessions, and then I’ll get the chance to watch same great sport at Sam Boyd Stadium.   I’ll be sure to share the highlights in my next post.

And, of course, I’ll get to enjoy ‘Vegas’.  But I won’t be blogging about that.  What happens in Vegas…..

I’ve previously had the occasion to write in this blog about rugby union as well as other football codes, such as Aussie rules football. I’ve had, as well, the opportunity to interview one of USA Rugby’s Team Physicians, Dr. Bruce Miller, who has been a guest on one of our “5 Questions with CJSM” posts.

Both rugby union and rugby league have featured regularly as sports we’ve studied in the pages of the journal itself.  Last year we looked at injury prevention in rugby union; in 2012 we looked at shoulder instability in professional rugby players; and also in 2012 we looked at the proportion of time-loss and non-time-loss injuries  in first team rugby league.  This brief sampling just scratches the surface of the multiple offerings we’ve had about these great sports over the years.

But CJSM has not had any study or article on Rugby 7’s, the variant of rugby union with 7 players as opposed to 15 on a side; shorter halves; and the version of rugby which will be making its debut as an Olympic sport in two short years in Rio.  We will have to rectify that!  I suspect as the prominence of this version of the sport increases over time, we’ll be seeing more manuscript submissions focusing on the injuries and injury patterns unique to it.  In the mean time, I may just have to look for some study collaborators in between my gaming—er, my studies at the conference.

sam boyd stadium

Sam Boyd Stadium, in Las Vegas:
site of the IRB Sevens Tournament stop
in the U.S.

More soon!

Filed under General Interest Tagged with , ,

2014 International/Canadian Sports Medicine Conference

January 16, 2014 by 1 Comment

FIMS 2014

First stop on the 2014 conference
circuit is Vegas, but in the summer
we’ll be enjoying the charms of
Vieux-Québec for FIMS/CASEM 2014

Turning the corner into the start of a new year, some of us can flag a little bit:  the holidays are behind us;  in the Northern Hemisphere the days remain short.

I find myself thinking about some of the travel and conferences I have planned for 2014.  For instance, in a little more than a week I’ll be heading to Vegas for the USA Rugby Sports Medicine conference.  Among the many very interesting speakers, Rob Cantu will be talking about “Short Term and Long Term Results of Repetitive Sub-Concussive and Concussive Head Injury” and Ann McKee will discuss “Emerging Concepts in Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy” (CTE).

Among Dr. Cantu’s many, many contributions to the concussion literature, he is one of the authors on the Zurich 2012 Consensus Statement on Concussion in Sport.  Dr. McKee has done extensive work in the area of CTE, and we discussed some of that work in a blog post last fall.

I’ll be posting from Vegas on the highlights of the rugby conference.  Today, I wanted to share with you my enthusiasm for a conference coming up later in the year.  Early this summer, the XXXIII International Federation of Sports Medicine (FIMS) World Congress will take place in Quebec City, QC, Canada June 18-21, 2014.  This will be a joint venture with the Canadian Academy of Sports and Exercise Medicine (CASEM), which will be holding its annual conference at the same time.

The conference agenda is still being developed, and if you’re interested in submitting an abstract for consideration you still have a little time:  the deadline for abstract submission is January 31.  Get cracking on that!  I’ve got an abstract in myself, and hoping to hear a thumbs up from the education committee.

The CASEM conference is always a great one, and to have FIMS joining in on the education and fun makes the event doubly alluring.  Although the details are still in the works, the publisher and some of the editors for CJSM plan on giving a talk at the joint conference.  Our Executive Editor Christopher Hughes and myself will offer advice to potential submitting authors on how best to get their work published in CJSM.  We’ll also be discussing how authors can use resources such as our video abstracts to enhance and promote their work on all this journal’s media channels.

800px-Stonehenge_Summer_Solstice_eve_02

While they celebrate the solstice in Stonhenge,
we’ll be enjoying CASEM/FIMS2014 in Quebec!

So, we’re hoping to see you in Quebec City in June.  Until then, we’ll be dreaming of crepes and strolls on the bluffs overlooking the St. Lawrence, and the long, long days that will be all of ours to enjoy in Quebec come the conference, which coincides with the summer solstice.

Don’t put away those ice scrapers just yet, but there’s a whiff of summer in the air……

Filed under General Interest Tagged with ,

Articular Cartilage Pathology: What to do?

January 12, 2014 by 2 Comments

A syringe delivering PRP:
A silver bullet for osteoarthritis?

My fall was so busy, I’m finally getting back to doing a sequel of a post I wrote in early October:  Osteoarthritis Part I.

I’m finally writing “Part II.”

The proximal impetus for finally attending to this item on my personal ‘to do’ list?  The new, January 2014 edition of the Clinical Journal of Sports Medicine has a couple of very fine articles on the treatment of articular cartilage pathology. One of the studies, “Treatment of Cartilage Defects of the Knee: Expanding on the Existing Algorithm,” is a general review I hope to post about in the near future.  The study that is in my line of fire today explores the uses of platelet-rich plasma (PRP) in the treatment of osteoarthritis and cartilage defects: “Platelet-rich Plasma in the Management of Articular Cartilage Pathology:  A Systematic Review.”

I found this review to be incredibly helpful.  It begins with an overview of articular cartilage pathology and a reminder of the frustrations in treating a tissue that has a limited inherent healing capacity.   Rarely can articular cartilage repair itself.  And when injury penetrates subchondral bone, underlying marrow cells can be stimulated to provide some repair, but inevitably the fibrocartilage that results is a biomechanically inferior substitute for native, articular hyaline cartilage.

ocd for blog 2

OCD of the medial femoral condyle:
what will this joint look like in 2044?

The review notes the increasing incidence of chondral and osteochondral lesions, something as a pediatric sports medicine specialist I can attest to.  The 10 year old with knee OCD I am treating today:  I often wonder what their knee will be like in 30 years?

The authors note:   “Several treatment modalities are available, including microfracture, autologous chondrocyte transplatation, and autograft and allograft osteochondral transplantation.  However, the reported resulst with these procedures have been variable and are not guaranteed to prevent symptomatic degenerative disease at long-term follow up.”

In other words, the hunt is on for an effective, definitive treatment of articular cartilage injury.  Might PRP be the answer?

The brief answer:  we need to learn much, much more about PRP, and probably about articular cartilage, too.

Let’s start with the limitations.  Read more of this post

Filed under Evidence-based Medicine in SEM, General Interest, Patient Outcome Measures Tagged with , ,

2013 in review

December 31, 2013 by

Thanks to the WordPress.com stats helpers who prepared a 2013 annual report for the CJSM blog. We hope you are enjoying your New Year’s holiday!  Good bye 2013, and hello 2014!

And for a great way to start off the new year, check out the new January 2014 CJSM, which has just published.  We are highlighting the AMSSM Position Statement on Youth Sports accompanied by an editorial from Dr. William Roberts , both of which are free!!!

Who needs champagne to ring in the new year?

Here’s an excerpt from the 2013 blog review:

The concert hall at the Sydney Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 41,000 times in 2013. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 15 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.

Click here to see the complete report.

Filed under General Interest

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