Sticks and Stones- Not the only thing to break bones... at 22:55

"Be careful what you wish for" is such a cliche saying; however, there is a reason the phrase exists.  I've always wanted a broken bone; a certain sense of toughness always accompanies a broken bone or a severe scar.  It took playing sports for over fifteen years for a bone to break in my body. My freshman year of college, I had the experience of breaking my upper orbital and the lower part of the zygomatic bones (the bones that surround the eye).  The story itself is entertaining, but the surgical procedure is what truly fascinates me.

My surgeon cut incisions inside my lower eye lid and inside my upper lip to perform the surgery, leaving no visible signs of the accident.  In less than four weeks, my appearance was back to normal, and I was able to return to sports.  Miracles such as these for athletes happen every day.  Broken bones, torn ligaments, dislocated joints very seldom keep an athlete from return to their sport.  





A couple of new technological advances that aid athletes include:

Arthroscopy: Using a small fiberoptic scope, doctors preform arthroscopic surgery to diagnose the actual injury. The incision for this scope is small, only a couple of centimeters, and allows the surgeon to pinpoint the damage, without damaging any additional tissue.  Depending on the injury, the surgeon can repair the ligament damage with no additional incisions.  The athlete experiences less swelling and quicker recovery time with the smaller incisions and less damaged tissue.

Tissue Engineering: Torn cartilage, typically in the knee, can be life changing to an athlete. Cartilage does not heal like typical tissue and keeps an athlete from returning fully recovered.  In fact, once cartilage is damaged, more than likely it is forever altered.  With tissue engineering, scientists have found a method that uses a small amount of healthy cartilage to grow enough to replace a portion of damaged cartilage.

Targeted Pain Relief: There are new forms of pain medicine that can be applied directly to the area of discomfort.  This allows a quicker reduction of pain and discomfort.  The pain relief patches can be used for sore muscles, bruises, and tweaked joints.

These are just some of the advances used today.  There are numerous other improvements in the medicine world that aid athletes, and more are being discovered and invented every day.

For more information on sport injuries visit this website!