During the last years, muscle strengthening exercises have been included as an essential part in youth physical activity guidelines of national and international health organisations. It is well-documented that strength training is effective in improving physical fitness and promoting health and psycho-social well-being. Therefore, the purpose of this review article is to present empirical evidence on the effectiveness of strength training in children and adolescents.
Read More
The popularity of alpine skiing is growing among young athletes. However, this development also carries the risk of early health problems such as traumatic and overuse injuries. To support a long-term beneficial effect of an early sport specialization, the amount of appropriate volume and intensity of training need to be investigated. As a basis for a prospective and reliable data collection, we developed a training and injury database to repeatedly record the occurrence of traumatic injuries and overuse injuries. Study participants were 82 young talented alpine skiers aged between 9 and 14 years.
Read More
The special feature in recreational scuba diving is the high ambient pressure under water. As a consequence, specific behavioral rules and special requirements exist for safe diving in children and adolescents, especially for the preparticipation examination done by the diving physician. In this overview article, we describe the physical basics of diving, the sport-specific characteristics of recreational scuba diving with a special focus on children and adolescents (Declaration of Eisenach). We describe the requirements for health and for the medical certification for scuba diving.
Read More
The growing spine is – particularly in performance oriented young athletes – prone to overload: under pubertal hormonal influence the 48 cartilaginous growth zones beneath the vertebral endplates are mechanical as fragil as never before during growth whereas on the other side the impacting forces are becoming higher due to the longer trunk lever arm, the often apparent relative muscular insufficiency, the increasing training hours and intensity as well as the willingness and pressure to perform. The subsequent biomechanical imbalance usually results in simple functional complaints but may also entail structural changes, for example (thoraco-) lumbar Scheuermann’s disease in sports with high axial impact such as alpine skiing oder gymnastics.
Read More
Moderate endurance training is known to improve cardiovascular risk factors, and prolongs life expectancy. On the other hand, there has been some discussion whether “too much” exercise might have a contrarious effect by accelerating coronary atherosclerosis. The goal of this review was to evaluate the current literature on the effects of long-term vigorous endurance training on the coronary vasculature. In summary, data point to an increased calcium score, and a higher burden of atherosclerotic plaque in male athletes compared to sedentary controls.
Read More
Ideally, the musculosceletal system and it’s components maintain a biologic balance during growth in order to compensate and/or adapt to intrinsic and extrinsic factors. Otherwise, the risk of acute or overuse injuries is increasing. The growth cartilage at the level of the growth plates or apophyses as well as the spine is highly vulnerable to overuse injuries, especially during the pubertal growth spurt. The diagnosis of an overuse injury is often delayed due to the undulant clinical manifestation and the treatment can be extensive and long-lasting, sometimes leading to an early cessation of sports activities.
Read More
During our Annual meeting of the Society for Pediatric Sports Medicine in Basel 2017 one of the highlight sessions was the PRO-CON discussion about the use of a resting ECG as screening tool to detect youth at risk for sudden cardiac death. We present the two statements of the cardiology experts that were finally not so controversial as the PRO-CON may suggest.
Well as often in medicine, it is the choice of each of you, how to deal with the situation. On one side we are taught to know and listen to the “evidence in medicine”, but on the other side we so often end up in our traditional professional perspective as decision maker that is not always wrong …
Read More
Kinder sind von klein auf hoch motiviert, sich zu bewegen, freuen sich an neu gewonnenen motorischen Fertigkeiten und haben Spass an der Bewegung. Dabei geht es nicht um Sport, sondern einfach nur um die aktuelle Freude an der Aktivität an sich. Sport – also Bewegung um eines Zieles wegen – sollte später kommen. Das Eintrittsalter in den Wettkampfsport ist jedoch in den letzten Jahren gesunken, Leistungssport bei Grundschülern mit Trainingsumfängen von 10–20 Stunden pro Woche in Sportarten wie Schwimmen, Turnen, rhythmische Sportgymnastik oder Ähnliches hat es früher nicht gegeben.
Read More
Mind-body medicine is a holistic approach that aims to increase a healthy life style of people and their resilience. Practically, mind-body medicine encompasses intervention methods such as mindfulness, physical exercise, coping with stress, or cognitive restructuring. Mind-body medicine has proven effective for a variety of chronic illnesses, especially in combination with conventional medicine. The present article introduces basic concepts of mind-body medicine including aspects of mindfulness.
Read More
Autologous blood injections have received considerable attention in recent time and are being employed for a variety of indications. Their mechanism of action is to fill or cover a defect and then locally release growth factors which will initiate and maintain wound healing processes. Building on these processes, positive Effects of autologous bllod have been shown for the treatment of tendons, ligaments and cartilage defects. Currently, research is being done to expand these indications by the deliberate addition of cells or supporting biomaterials. This paper elucidates the effect of and indications for the use of autologous blood from the shoulder to the ankle.
Read More
Non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) have the highest intake of all medication in elite and non-elite athletes. The high consumption by athletes (30–50%) participating in team and single-sports leads to the assumption that not only injuries are being treated, but that masking symptoms of minor complaints or post-exercise fatigue might be the primary indication for their intake, without considering their potential harmful side-effects on general health but also on training adaptive processes.
Read More
In 2013, the publication of Steven Claes [1] on the anterolateral ligament (ALL) in the “Journal of Anatomy” caused an important media buzz, highlighting a “new knee ligament”. The problem for the surgeons in 2017 is therefore whether this ALL is really a ligamentous structure in its own right, if it has a role in the rotatory control of the knee and especially if it must be restored during a reconstruction of the ACL.
Read More
ACL injuries in children and adolescents have increased substantially in recent years. Nevertheless, treatment algorithms are domiated by predjudice more than by evidence, eventhough the scientific basis, summarized in this paper, is sound. The likelihood of an ACL tear in a traumatic hemarthros, even without contact, is 52%. More than half of the cases show concurrent injuries. Methods and criteria for success of conservative treatment are published in detail, however, surgical treatment produces a better clinical outcome in most cases. Various surgical techniques exist, and age appropriate treatment can elimate the risk of a growth disturbance and restore the normal function of the knee.
Read More
Background: Heart rate variability (HRV) as a measure of the cardiac autonomic nervous system activity (CANA) has the potential to tailor endurance training and may contribute to the prevention of overtraining. We aimed to investigate whether there are sex differences and sex-specific reactions of the CANA to different training periods (TPs) in Swiss elite runners.
Methods: Two HRV measurements (each 5 minutes supine and 5 minutes standing) per athlete were performed, the first during preparation period (PP) and the second during competition period (CP).
Read More
Supplement use in able-bodied athletes during major championships was reported to be around 80 to 90%. In contrast, the prevalence of supplement use in Paralympic athletes according to surveys from 2004 and 2012 was lower with around 40 to 58%. This study aimed to investigate the supplement use in Swiss wheelchair athletes. All Swiss wheelchair athletes were asked to complete a retrospective survey on supplement use during training and competition.
Read More
To counter progressive dehydration and thirst, athletes drink during exercise. However, despite decades of scientific research, there is still no conclusive answer regarding how much we should drink to optimize performance. The goal of this review article is to analyze the arguments underpinning contrasting perspectives and to critically analyze the available evidence.
It seems that the respective argumentations of contrasting viewpoints are based on a different selective fraction of the available evidence.
Read More