Blog

Our Physical therapists are sports medicine specialists capable of effectively treating any sports-related injury.

If you’re an athlete and you experience an injury while playing your sport, you’re probably looking for sports medicine treatment in Brooklyn. Regardless of the type of injury or the sport in which it occurred, though, the best option in every case is to see a physical therapist as soon as possible. This is because physical therapists are sports medicine specialists who are experts at diagnosing and treating any and all sports-related injuries.

Sports medicine is a branch of health care that deals with the physical fitness of both amateur and professional athletes.  Sports therapy specialists focus on helping these athletes improve their athletic performance, and most importantly, treating their injuries and reducing the risk for future injuries that can be prevented.

Physical Therapists Play a Central Role in Sports Medicine Treatment

A sports medicine team includes physical therapists, physicians, surgeons, athletic trainers, coaches and athletes, who all work together to keep injury risk at a minimum and to effectively treat injuries when they do occur. Physical therapists play a central role in this team by being the most commonly used method to rehabilitate the majority of injuries in just about every sport.

For this reason, physical therapists are well versed in which types of injuries occur most frequently in each sport, and they are experienced in identifying and properly treating a vast range of sport-specific injuries.  For example, they know to look for the following injuries in each of these sports:

• Basketball: ankle sprains, jumper’s knee, ACL injuries
• Baseball: shoulder and elbow injuries, especially damage and tears of the ulnar collateral ligament
• Football: concussions, ACL and meniscus injuries, ankle sprains
• Tennis: tennis elbow, rotator cuff and other shoulder injuries
• Running: runner’s knee, jumper’s knee, plantar fasciitis, Achilles tendinitis

So when an athlete sees a physical therapist with an injury, the therapist will know exactly what to look for in order to accurately diagnose the problem. From there, they will develop a personalized and sport-specific treatment program that takes into consideration the demands of the sport in order to reach the best possible outcome.

To highlight the effectiveness of physical therapists as sports medicine specialists, this recent study shows how physical therapy is better than injections for tennis elbow:

Physiotherapy was a cost-effective treatment for lateral epicondylalgia. Corticosteroid injection was associated with greater variability, and a lower probability of being cost-effective if a willingness to pay threshold of $A50 000 is assumed. A combination of corticosteroid injection and physiotherapy was ineffective and cost-ineffective. Physiotherapy, not corticosteroid injection, should be considered as a first-line intervention for lateral epicondylalgia.

So if you’re dealing with any type of sports injury, remember that physical therapy should always be your first choice for treatment, and the sooner you see a therapist, the greater the chances of a positive outcome. Click here to see where we are located (we have 4 locations to serve you).