Sports Injuries Specialist

What are sports injuries?

Sports injuries are usually musculoskeletal and occur as a result of physical activity. While they commonly happen in contact sports like football or rugby, you can get a sports injury while engaging in any physical activity. You can even get one while lifting weights at the gym. 

Sports injuries are particularly common because the physical activity involves rapid or repeated movements of muscles, nerves, and tendons that you might not engage on a day-to-day basis. 

While you’re more likely to get a sports injury if you don’t train correctly, avoid stretching, or use a poor technique, you can’t always prevent them by following the rules perfectly or taking steps to prevent them, like wearing padding. 

What are some of the most common sports injuries?

Your sports injury might affect hard tissue, soft tissue, or both: Bones, ligaments, tendons, and muscles can all accumulate damage during athletic activities. They can also affect almost any area of your body, including your:

• Knees, including anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) tears
• Shoulders
• Back
• Neck 
• Rotator cuff within the shoulder
• Hips

Sports injuries are most likely to occur near joints since your joints engage in movement and are less sturdy than other parts of your body. 

How are sports injuries treated?

Interventional Pain Consultants takes a multimodal approach to the treatment and recovery of sports injuries. Your provider works with you to develop a treatment plan after examining your injury closely with X-ray imaging or magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans. Your plan may involve:

Regenerative treatments

Regenerative treatments, like platelet-rich plasma (PRP) injections and stem cells, accelerate or enhance healing by introducing a concentrated dose of growth factors to the injured area. 

Peripheral nerve stimulation

Peripheral nerve stimulation can treat prolonged pain resulting from a sports injury. During a minor surgery, your provider places a small electrode near the aggravated nerve to deliver an electrical signal to it. The device includes a small generator that you can control with an outside remote. 

Steroid injections

Steroid injections can go directly into an injured area to relieve inflammation, like an injured joint. Epidural steroid injections, a specific type, go into the epidural space around your spinal cord. They relieve pressure around nerves in the region to reduce pain within your back and referred pain resulting from the injury. 

You may also benefit from trigger point therapy to relieve pain from a sports injury.

Interventional Pain Consultants refers out for physical therapy to help you make a full recovery while restoring mobility. In rare instances, surgery is necessary for injuries that don’t find relief with a comprehensive noninvasive or minimally invasive treatment plan. 

Being physically active is undoubtedly healthy, but injuries can occur no matter your sport. To make a full recovery with a comprehensive sports injury treatment plan, call Interventional Pain Consultants, or schedule an appointment online today.