Why Do We Focus on Injury Prevention?

When I was an Orthopaedic Surgery resident doing a rotation in a major metropolitan (before I committed to Sports Medicine instead of surgery), I asked one of the surgeons “how about us doing an ACL prevention program?”  His answer surprised me. He replied: “Why would I do that? Repairing ACLs is how I make my living.” I didn’t think that was the right answer, and I still don’t.

As a sports medicine specialist, I have a real commitment to musculoskeletal health ever since entering the field in the 1990’s.  There are three specific ways that Integrative Sports Medicine takes injury prevention seriously for our community and patients.

Here are some of the ways we provde our commitment to injury prevention:

  1. We Partner with stopsportsinjuries.org This is big.  Stop Sports Injuries is an international program initiated by the American Orthopaedic Society for Sports Medicine, and they provide extensive, sport-specific educational materials meant for patients, parents and coaches.  They partner with one medical practice per geographical area, and Integrative Sports Medicine is their local partner. Why? They recognize through discussions with our team that we are committed to the musculoskeletal health of people, regardless of whether they are our patients.  Injury prevention injury information from Stop Sports Injuries is available on our website and can be found here.
  2. Providing the Sportsmetrics program –  Sportsmetrics is the only on-site program proven to reduce injury risk.  This injury prevention program is typically for student athletes age 14 and up and is done at ISM.  It is a physical program that identifies and corrects movement and balance imperfections that can lead to serious injuries such as ACL tear.  Our Athletic Trainer is going through certification in this program and it will be available in February 2019. 
  3. Being mindful of root causes of sports injuries – When you or your loved one is in for a visit, we pay attention to movement patterns that may have caused the pain and/or injury that we are treating at the time.  If we do identify an adverse movement pattern, we do not just let it go. We make sure it gets treated, usually by a Doctorate in Physical Therapy.