Athletic Injury

Athletic sports bring with it an increased incidence of athletic injuries. These athletic injuries are classified into macrotrauma and microtrauma. Macrotrauma is sudden injury from a major force like a fall or hit during play and can be in the form of fractures, muscle strains, sprains of ligaments or contusions. Repetitive athlete injury over a period of time are referred to as microtrauma and includes stress fracture, shoulder impingement syndrome and little league elbow.

Most common athletic injuries in boys arise from football while soccer accounts for most injuries in girls. Adolescents are those in the risk of athletic injuries as their growth spurt places pressure on their bodies to support the increased weight and load. Common injuries among college athletes involve knee and spinal cord injuries and sprains, strains and fractures.

Athletic knee injuries occur because of numerous overuse syndromes like patellofemoral syndrome where there is abnormal movement in the kneecap when flexed and extended and Osgood-Schlatter where there is pain when the tendon tibia is used during exercise. With osteochonditris dessicans, the knee feels locked, swollen and unstable with a part of the bone separating from the femur.

In an athletic spinal cord injury, there is damage to the spinal cord and its associated nerves with which there is complete loss of mobility and/or sensation in the body. Athletes with spinal cord injury either suffer from paraplegic or tetraplegic injuries where their effect is described as complete or incomplete. In spinal cord injuries cases, athletes that lose substantial mobility in legs and feet with have full or partial sensations in hands and arms are considered to be paraplegia. However, in tetraplegia, there is substantive loss of motion in all the four major limbs. Athletes with spinal cord injuries in the lower chest or back are paraplegic while spinal cord injuries athletes with injury in the upper back or neck are tetraplegic.

The most reported serious athletic head injuries occur in contact and collision sports like wrestling, hockey and football. These head injuries range from mild to severe injuries where a grade III concussion is considered to be a gruesome athletic injury with accompanied unconsciousness. These injuries usually require surgery. With all these major injuries of professional athletes, it was found that the psychological response to athletic injury was usually frustration and anger. It is always the family and teammates that provide the required social support when an athlete suffers from an athletic injury.