Muscles, Joints, Ligaments & Bones

Kids are especially susceptible to hand injuries while playing sports.   Here are some prevention and treatment tips.

Reconstructive ACL surgery on young athletes using replacement ligaments from cadavers have high failure rate.

Early specialization and playing on a select or travel team take their toll on a child's growing bones, joints, and muscles. Prior to high school, most children are simply not physically mature enough to handle the stress that playing a single sport on a year-round or nearly year-round basis places on their bodies.

Women and girls are more prone to ACL injuries than men and boys but the risk can be reduced if athletes perform warm-up, stretching, strengthening, plyometric, and sport-specific agility exercises before sports.

Overuse injuries have become commonplace among young athletes in the last decade (although "Little League elbow" has been a problem for decades). They are not the kind suffered by children and adolescents engaging in free play or "pick up" games, but are clearly a product of the organized youth sports boom. The damage to hard and soft tissues resulting from undetected, unreported and often untreated overuse injuries can be permanent and lead to problems later in life, such as arthritis.

Bicycles, basketball, football and roller sports top the list of eight recreational activities with the largest number of musculoskeletal injuries among children ages 5-14 years, a study shows.

A strain is a twist, pull and/or tear of a muscle and/or tendon. Tendons are fibrous cords of tissue that attach muscles to bone. Strains and sprains are among the most common sports injuries.