Sports traumas have a wide distribution in terms of the production mechanism, the area of the tissues involved, the type of sport practiced, the type of organism (bio-somato-mechanical conformation) of each individual practicing sport, the frequency of training. Last but not least, we can discuss the traumas that occur on a psychological basis. In many cases, the athlete’s fear of getting injured contributes to the etiological formation of the ground that will “host” a primary injury from which the final cascade will be triggered with the unfortunate result of the consequences of sports trauma.
Management in recovery
The management of a recovery following a sports trauma involves several directions, namely:
- Finding the etiology of the trauma;
- Elaboration of a definite diagnosis, as quickly as possible by excluding other diagnostic possibilities (differential diagnosis);
- Having a definite diagnosis of the trauma that has occurred, one can proceed to the stage of outlining the main lines of treatment;
- Treatment instituted quickly and carried out correctly will lead to the return of the athlete to training and then to competition, in due time.
Evaluation of a recovering athlete
From the perspective of the initiation and subsequent management of the recovery procedures, certain directions must be emphasized that will help us in developing a procedural plan corresponding to the pathology. In this sense, the history is a powerful tool in the initial approach to the athlete. We are interested in the periodicity of similar lesions appearing in the same area, the type of pain, periods of exacerbation or, on the contrary, their chronic nature. It is possible to detect the types of physical exercises performed correctly or erroneously from the perspective of insufficient warm-up before the start of the actual physical effort in training/competition. Also, the correlation of certain pains with the initiation of different intensities than the previous ones within a training, the change in a too brutal way without a prior adaptation of some training techniques, the lack of timely acclimatization of the athlete to different altitudes, the lack a restful sleep, neuropsychic disorders appearing suddenly and at different intervals.