PRiSM — An Acronym to Know

Drs. Min Kocher (L) Boston Children’s Hospital & Hank Chambers (R) Rady Children’s Hospital

I’m just wrapping up a productive, educational, and enjoyable few days in San Diego, where I attended the 3rd Annual Meeting of the Pediatric Research in Sports Medicine (PRISM).

Don’t know that acronym?  I suspect you’ll be hearing it more frequently over the next several years.

The brainchild of Hank Chambers, pediatric orthopedic surgeon at Rady Children’s Hospital, San Diego, PRISM aspires to join the forces of several stakeholders and raise the bar in terms of research in pediatric sports medicine.  It brings together primary care sports medicine physicians, orthopaedic surgeons, athletic trainers, physical therapists and musculoskeletal radiolgists.

Things got heated up between some of the presenters at PRISM: ‘in the ring’ were Drs. d’Hemecourt (L) and Minor (R)–debating the relative merits of bracing in spondylolysis

Dr. Chambers just turned over the president’s reins to Mininder Kocher, a pediatric orthopedic surgeon at Boston Children’s Hospital.  Dr. Kocher must have called in the chips on the folks he knows from Boston Children’s, as a great number of the speakers at PRISM have had (past/present) some affiliation with that institution.  A short list of these presenters, all of whom have been authors at some time in the pages of CJSM, include:  Andrea Stracciolini, Lyle Micheli, Pierre d’Hemecourt, Kate Ackerman, Anthony Luke and Dai Sugimoto.  And Benton Heyworth presided over all as the head of the programming committee.

It was a pleasure seeing these folks, as they are like family (I trained at Boston Children’s too).  And it was great seeing other friends as well, like Andrew Gregory (Nashville), Greg Canty (Kansas City) and Greg Myer (Cincinnati).  But it was a special pleasure, and a unique feature of these sorts of meetings, to make the acquaintance of folks whose names I have heard on several different occasions but had heretofore never met.  Christina Master of Children’s Hospital, Philadelphia for instance.  She gave a great talk on clinical tools in the evaluation of pediatric sports related concussions and was tweeting up a storm during the entire conference.

Greg Myer of Cincinnati Children’s, fielding questions after his talk on return to play post ACL reconstruction.

I found it particularly inspiring to hear the updates from orthopedic colleagues on multi-center trials looking at important injuries in the pediatric athlete:  ranging from knee OCD (the ‘ROCK’ study) to ACL reconstructions (the ‘PLUTO’ study)–I am really looking forward to the results coming from these studies, as they are sure to affect the clinical management of so many patients I serve in the future.

Finally, there was San Diego–a bit of sun and warmth in the middle of winter!  I swam in an outdoor pool three days in a row–I haven’t enjoyed that pleasure in four months.

I lacked for nothing here at PRISM–I gained in knowledge, friendship, and Vitamin D.  Who could ask for more?  I’ve already got the meeting in 2017 (to take place in Dallas) on my calendar–I hope to see you there too!