43rd Annual Symposium on Sports Medicine

January 21-23 I was in San Antonio for the 43rd Annual Symposium on Sports Medicine brought to me by the UT Health Science Center. It earned me continuing education hours to go towards my PTA state license. I went with my friend and former coworker Felicia. We split a hotel room at the Marriott where the conference was being held.  It was so very informative. I'm practicing in home health these days, so a symposium on sports medicine may seem a little odd, but really I treated it as a huge refresher on anatomy. Most of the speakers were Orthopedic doctors, with a few speakers being physical therapists. I learned about facial injuries, nutritional supplements, heat illness, pre-participation physicals, concussions, return to play, cervical injuries, spinal injuries, foot and ankle, saw an anatomy lab of a live dissection of a knee and foot, ACL repairs, MRI of the Lower Extremity, and on and on and on. Every 20 minutes for almost 8 hours we had a new speaker, and every 2-3 hours we had a 20 break or a longer lunch break, for 2 days. I had fun seeing how far I could walk during the 20 minute breaks, I found a nice quick route to the Riverwalk which became my favorite. The ground of the hotel were gorgeous too, I saw male and female peacocks.  During lunch on Saturday afternoon they had box lunches for us. Felicia and a newly made friend Allison took our lunches across the street to a park. It was a gorgeous day in the 60's and we ate and then played. Yes, we played. Three young professionals showing off our hula hoop skills. The park had a field with 8 hula hoops. It has a giant chess board and checker board. It had a playground with squishy ground cover and a jungle gym. I'd say we had the best lunch break of anybody in the conference. Then that afternoon Felicia and I had a 30 minute break so we decided to book it to the Alamo a few blocks away just to snap a terrible selfie.  Here are some pics of my adventures. Following which are some great lessons I learned. 

View from the room 

Felicia the conqueror! 

Here are a few smarty pants things I learned about sports medicine...some serious, some sarcastic. 

1.)  There are two basic supplements athletes (I guess I view anybody working out as an athlete). Branch Chain Amino Acids, aka protein.  I learned 3 oz of fish or meat and 1 cup of yogurt usually has 3.7 grams of protein. Half a cup of milk had 4 grams, and 1 cup of beans had 3 grams. The avg athlete should have 20 extra grams of protein either before or after a workout. Vitamin D was the other supplement that studies show has a huge effect on health and athletic performance. My take away: cold chocolate milk is a great post workout snack! 

2.) the dentist tried to convince us if we see someone with a jaw locked open, " you can't make them worse off, just put your thumbs on their molars and shove the jaw down and back".  really? that's all I have to do? He used the word "shove" a lot in relation to treating facial and jaw injuries. He was a delightful speaker though with his southern drawl. We quoted his version of condyle as "condial"drawn out and dramatic. What he did teach that I found interesting is that bite guards are important for all kinds of athletes.  A clenched jaw leads to an increase in cortisol levels which increase anxiety, and increased anxiety leads to more injury on contact in sports. Bite guards decrease a clenched jaw and so forth. Take away: if I let me children play sports, remember to make using a bite guard a deal breaker! 

3.) Regenerative Medicine. PRP, or Platelet Rich Plasma, is all the rage these days. It is used to restore living tissue to damaged areas and re-initiate the inflammatory phase of healing.  This is being used more and more to fractures or tendon injuries that just won't heal. The speaker made it sound like the future of medicine. Other speakers later on made it sound like a bunch of nonsense. I'm be interested in keeping my eye on this area of medicine. 

4.) Dr. Indelicato spoke about the chain of command as a team physician for a sports team. He stressed importance of sports team physicians not being the directly supervised by the coach. Again, not really applicable to my line of work today, but still fascinating to learn about this other area in the world of sports medicine. I remember I kept thinking how odd really sports medicine is.  We are treating things that are perfectly avoidable. This whole realm of medicine and physical therapy is to help people who abuse their bodies in ways that are not normal (shoulders don't like the torque put on them by pitching baseballs and brains don't like to be bounced around in skulls) to get back to abusing their bodies again. Don't get me wrong. I don't think we should all live in a bubble, and I love watching sports. Life has risks and being fit and healthy has risks. It just seemed at moments to be absurd what we put the human body through. 

5.) the best take away for me was Dr. Randall Schultz teaching about the knee and reminding us that meniscus help stabilize the knee joint when in flexion by not allow the femur to go too far posterior, especially when beyond 130 degrees of knee flexion.. He said in a knee replacement patient there is no meniscus therefore his is happy with a TKA patient NOT having greater then 130 of knee flexion. "I worry about a TKA with greater then 130 deg". My patients will be happy to know they do not need more then 130 of knee flex, although generally we shoot for at least a minimum of 120. 

6.) Finally, as much as I found it absurd what we put the body through, I was fascinated with what the body is capable of. The body is designed to move.  Muscles, fascia, ligaments, the seemingly useless but of so important seasmoids, and tendons all help stabilize and create optimal movement. Everything is right where is should be. The foot has 30 joints in it alone.  For some this proves the opposite, but for me it stands as evidence of a Divine creator who made everything so perfectly.