/ 19 April 2010

Sports injury update in time for World Cup

Sports Injury Update In Time For World Cup

Radiologists from around the world flocked to Cape Town last month to attend an intensive two-day workshop on medical imaging techniques for use in sports medicine.

World-renowned orthopaedic and sports medicine expert Dr David Stoller presented the workshop. Stoller is adjunct professor of radiology at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and author of a major orthopaedic textbook.

‘Because of the coming World Cup, there is a heightened awareness of sports injuries and we wanted to do a course to update radiologists,” said Professor Leon Janse van Rensburg, chairperson of the Radiological Society of South Africa (RSSA).

Formally called the RSSA/Stoller MRI Update in Sports Medicine, the seminar was in no way affiliated with the World Cup, Janse van Rensburg said. But ‘out of professionalism, we need to be prepared”.

The workshop focused on the latest techniques for magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) of the joints, assessing the integrity and stability of bone structure and identifying soft tissue injuries. This was the 18th annual course update run by the RSSA.

Any footballers seriously injured during the World Cup might need to have medical scans done by radiologists at a local healthcare facility.

For this reason the RSSA has encouraged radiologists to complete refresher courses and to update themselves on the latest imaging techniques.

Getting Stoller to South Africa to conduct the course was a ‘major coup”, Janse van Rensburg said. ‘This is the first time that he’s done a teaching course outside the United States — and he spoke for two days.”

Dr Mark Velleman, who specialises in musculoskeletal imaging, attended the course. ‘It’s not just the World Cup, it’s the TriNations, the Super 14, cricket and athletics events,” he said.

‘A lot of international athletes come to train here and we cater to them too. We need to keep abreast of advances in medical resonance imaging so we can give them the best of treatment.”

Velleman added: ‘The radiology community in South Africa is quite small but we are still trying to have centres of excellence — We have to be proactive in order to grow the radiology community.”

Universities do not offer postgraduate studies in radiology sub-specialisations such as musculoskeletal imaging, neural imaging or paediatric imaging, Janse van Rensburg said; and there are only a few fellowships available at hospitals that allow such sub-specialising.

So radiologists need to attend seminars and workshops to broaden their knowledge in specific areas, he said.

‘There are ongoing efforts from the RSSA, universities and the Faculty of Radiologists of the Colleges of Medicine of South Africa to create additional fellowships at hospitals so that more radiologists can specialise.”

Most of the radiologists who attended the workshop were from South Africa, but some travelled from New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United Arab Emirates .