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Sports triage medical screening and physical therapy management

Medical Screening is the process by which a physical therapist uses both subjective and objective examination to evaluate collected data and use clinical reasoning to make a decision as to whether to treat the patient, refer the patient or initiate both treatment and referral (1,2). Medical screening is conducted at the ‘systems level’, which involves identifying ‘red flag’ signs and/or symptoms (1). Red flags can be placed into the following classification system: Category I: Factors that require immediate medical attention; Category II: Factors that require subjective questioning and precautionary examination and treatment procedures; and Category III: Factors that require further physical testing and differentiation analysis (3). Physical therapists’ expertise in identifying movement-related dysfunction fulfils the minimum professional requirement to identify pathology falling outside the scope of physical therapy practice (2). This article will highlight appropriate medical screening and physical therapy management for sudden cardiac arrest (SCA), concussion and ankle fractures.

The tendinopathy continuum explained

In the October 2012 issue of sportEX medicine I reviewed the current evidence and theories relating to Achilles tendinopathy. While many theories are still in situ the one that appears to have gained the most... Read More

Shoulder Impingement: Diagnosis, Treatment and Rehabilitation for Physical Therapists

Impingement accounts for up to 65% of all shoulder pain, and yet studies have been unable to determine the precise structure which is at fault. This article uses an evidence based approach to guide clinical... Read More

Physical Therapy Journal Watch - sportEX medicine Apr 2014

Catch up on this quarter's essential physical therapy research. Our Physical Therapy Journal Watch brings you all the most important journal discoveries with our own unique sportEX take-home messages. This is one of our most... Read More

  • It's all in the mind: Psychosocial interventions to improve recovery

    As practitioners we all have a range of modalities and tools to treat sport injuries, but how many of us use psychosocial skills to facilitate holistic recovery? There is a growing perspective that sports injury practitioners should be able to use basic psychosocial interventions with athletes as they are usually present immediately after the injury has taken place, and at the time when the levels of pain and confusion experienced by the athlete are at their worst. This article aims to increase knowledge of psychosocial interventions that can be used with injured athletes and provide some basic strategies to be considered in the day-to-day management of sports injury rehabilitation to improve practice.

  • Does specificity of manipulation matter in the treatment of chronic low back pain (LBP)

    Recently, many in the manual therapy community have been questioning the mechanisms of how spinal manipulation works. While some hold onto the belief that spinal manipulation has more of a biomechanical and structural influence, others believe the effects to be neurophysiological. In a 2011 study published in the journal Spine, Fritz et al. concluded that the mechanisms are likely multifactorial. These researchers reported measuring a decrease in global and terminal stiffness and improved recruitment of the lumbar multifidus following a lumbar manipulation (1). A more recent randomised controlled trial published in Physical Therapy assessed and compared the immediate effects of regional and non-regional spinal manipulation in patients with chronic low back pain (2). This study was necessary to determine if we need to segmentally target vertebrae to get the positive effects that others have found. Let’s take a closer look at what they did and what they discovered.

  • Who is at risk for falling and what can we do about it?

    Falls have a large impact on the overall health and quality of life in older adults. It has been estimated that 30–-60% of older, community-dwelling adults experience a fall each year and that approximately half of these individuals experience multiple falls. This number appears to be the highest in those who are 80 years of age and older, and increases as high as 75% in individuals who live in a nursing home (1).1 Multiple variables have been determined to predict the risk for falling and this article is to provide a comprehensive review of these factors as well as what we can do in an attempt to prevent them.