Price Transparency
Common Youth Ice Hockey Injuries and How to Avoid Them

Common Youth Ice Hockey Injuries and How to Avoid Them

by | Oct 17, 2022 | Sports Medicine

Ice hockey is a contact sport that carries a higher risk of injury as the skill and competition level increase. Though ice hockey may not be as prevalent in North Texas as it is in other regions, Scottish Rite’s Sports Medicine team still takes care of injuries from this fast-paced and fast-growing sport.

Rules, such as delaying body checking, change an athlete’s risk of injury. We asked Jacob C. Jones, M.D., RMSK, and Madelyn White, P.T., D.P.T., to answer a few questions about pediatric sports medicine and physical therapy as it relates to ice hockey. Here’s what they had to say.

What do we know about ice hockey injuries?
Injuries occur quite frequently. Even though much of youth hockey prohibits checking and overt contact, that doesn’t entirely eliminate all contact in the sport. Both acute and chronic musculoskeletal injuries happen to hockey players. Concussions are also common in ice hockey players.

Are there different injuries in different age groups or skill levels?
Although many injuries are similar, younger hockey players may have more frequent injuries involving their growth plates since older adolescents may be near completion of growth. As a result, providers should be aware of how any injury may affect a growth plate. This can help provide the best treatment and avoid future complications.

Are there certain considerations when a player returns to the ice after an injury and rehabilitation?
It’s important to allow a gradual return to full participation in on-ice and off-ice training after injury. Be sure to warm up adequately prior to practice and games and avoid playing through pain.

Are ice hockey injuries preventable?
Yes, some of them may be preventable, especially the chronic injuries. Different youth leagues around the world have implemented rules changes regarding checking to help reduce the incidence of acute injuries.

What are tips for a skater to help prevent injuries?
Wearing proper gear, continuing to build flexibility and core strength. Some common injuries include ankle and shoulder injuries. Focusing regularly on exercises that help with the strength and mobility of these areas could help prevent injuries. Many overuse injuries and burnout can be prevented by trying to find at least three months out of the year to do a non-hockey sport or activity.

What should parents know about concussions in ice hockey?
Like other contact sports, these happen even with appropriate protective equipment and rules to avoid contact. Given the unique nature of the sport of hockey compared to other field sports, a treatment plan and return to play program should be tailored to hockey players. Seeing a medical provider familiar with sport-related concussions and hockey can help determine when it is safe to return to the ice, then safe to return to full hockey participation.

Are there exercises to help prevent back pain in ice hockey skaters?
Exercises to maintain hip mobility can help maintain good skating form and avoid back pain during hockey. It’s also important to build up abdominal and glutes strength. Exercises such as planks, banded side steps and crab walks can help prevent low back pain.

Concussion Balance Study

Concussion Balance Study

by | Oct 10, 2022 | Sports Medicine

Learn how we use our Movement Science Lab to evaluate balance testing in sport-related concussion management.

Balance testing is commonly used to assess impairment and recovery after a sport-related concussion in the clinic setting. Measuring imbalances while going through various stances combined with both a firm and foam surface can provide valuable information in the evaluation of a concussion. Scottish Rite’s study, recently published in Brain Injury, was designed to look at how balance performance differed from diagnosis to return-to-play among athletes recovering from a concussion. A standardized test called the Balance Error Scoring System (BESS) is easy to perform in a clinic setting, but it may not provide the level of detail needed for a research study evaluating balance after sustaining a sport-related concussion. By conducting balance testing using the Movement Science Lab’s force plates, or special areas built into the flooring that are sensitive to the weight and force applied, researchers could correlate the BESS results with a highly objective center-of-pressure (COP) measure.

Principal investigator and director of movement science Sophia Ulman, Ph.D., explains the differences between these tests. “The BESS is a subjective test that requires clinical training and practice,” she says. “Alternatively, the force plate used to assess COP provides very specific, multidimensional measures that allow for discrimination of small differences in balance performance.”

It has been well established that there is an increased risk of prolonged symptoms as well as potential for compounding injuries if an athlete returns to play too soon after a sport-related concussion. Although balance is not the only measure used to determine readiness for sport, the proper assessment of balance is an important factor in this decision making. After reviewing data for these two tests in 40 patient-subjects, our team noted that the commonly used BESS test may not provide the information needed to assist with balance assessment as symptoms improved.

What does this mean for providers managing sport-related concussions?

Despite the volume of studies on the topic, the Sports Medicine team is continuing to learn about managing sport-related concussions in young and growing athletes. Pediatric sports medicine physician Shane M. Miller, M.D., says, “Until there is a better test to use in the clinical setting, we will continue to use tests like the BESS to do our best to assess balance improvement and identify the right time to return athletes to their sport. I suspect this will be a conversation for many years.”

The study, “Improvement in balance from diagnosis to return-to-play initiation following a sport-related concussion: BESS scores vs center-of-pressure measures,” was published in July 2022 in Brain Injury, the journal of the International Brain Injury Association.

Share Your Story: Take Flight

Share Your Story: Take Flight

by | Oct 7, 2022 | Dyslexia & Learning Disorders

Meet Levi – a patient who is seen in the Luke Waites Center for Dyslexia & Learning Disorders. Learn more about his journey below.

Blog written by Levi’s dad, Josh.  

My wife Kelly and I have eight children, as young as five and as old as 24. We have homeschooled our children since our oldest daughter was in first grade.

Around the time our second oldest daughter, Grace, was in kindergarten and first grade, my wife noticed that Grace was having difficulty reading. At that time, we were living in Austin. Grace was evaluated with a local diagnostician and diagnosed with dyslexia. We worked with a local language therapist, and Grace was provided her the tools she needed to learn to read. Grace will graduate college in about a year.

A young boy is sitting at a table with lego toys on it

Levi is seven years old and our second to youngest child. When Kelly started teaching kindergarten with him, she noticed almost right away that he was having similar struggles, like Grace did when she was younger. By now, we had moved from Austin to Arlington, and we reached out to Scottish Rite for Children in Dallas.  
 
They evaluated him, and Levi was diagnosed with ADHD and dyslexia. We were looking into finding private language therapy for him, just like we had done for our daughter, Grace. It turned out that there was an opening for Levi to do the Take Flight program at Scottish Rite starting in fall of 2021. We jumped at this chance.
 
We have seen a great deal of progress since Levi started this program. We thank God for connecting us with Scottish Rite. He loves everyone who has taught him, and he loves to learn!

Last December, Levi fell while playing basketball. He came to his Take Flight class with his arm in a sling, from the ER visit the night before. The leaders of his class were able to get us connected with some of the orthopedic experts and he was able to get the care that he needed. Turns out he had broken in his arm in three places, and Scottish Rite was just the place he needed to help treat his arm.

The Luke Waites Center for Dyslexia and Learning Disorders at Scottish Rite has been a blessing to our family, and we are incredibly thankful for the impact they are making on Levi’s life.

 

DO YOU HAVE A STORY? WE WANT TO HEAR IT! SHARE YOUR STORY WITH US.

A young boy in a suit and bow tie smiles in front of a fireplace

Does my child need surgery to fix a clavicle fracture?

Does my child need surgery to fix a clavicle fracture?

by | Sep 28, 2022 | Sports Medicine

Pediatric orthopedic surgeons Henry B. Ellis, M.D., and Philip L. Wilson, M.D., along with colleagues from the multicenter study group Factors Associated with Clavicle Treatment Study (FACTS) have published another set of findings in the American Journal of Sports Medicine. This group, like many others in pediatric orthopedics and sports medicine, merges the experiences and data from across institutions to provide the best evidence for care in the pediatric population. This group focuses their efforts on collarbone (clavicle) fractures and injuries in children and adolescents.

Here are some highlights from the publication. You can also visit the journal’s website to read the full article.

  • Midshaft clavicle fractures most often occur in adolescents, yet, most medical evidence is in adults until now.
  • More than 400 patients (10 to 18 years) with 100% displaced clavicle fractures were included in the study.
  • After two years, there was no difference in outcomes between those that had surgery and those that did not.
  • Those who underwent surgery had more nerve damage (loss of sensation on their chest wall) and more second surgery to remove plates and screws.
  • The study conclusion states, “Surgery demonstrated no benefit in patient-reported quality of life, satisfaction, shoulder-specific function or prevention of complications after completely displaced clavicle shaft fractures in adolescents at two years after injury.”

So, the answer to the question, “Does my child need surgery to fix a clavicle fracture?” is not yes. But, that also does not mean it is no. The study describes the general experience of a large group patients who have and have not had surgery for this condition. The individualized assessment of the patient is still important and necessary, but the study does show that there is not an obvious answer that applies to all patients. “This work is new and very important for the growing body of evidence in caring for this population,” Ellis says. “We can confidently tell families that one path is not yet obviously better than another.” In our individualized patient care, it is important for us to provide evidence-based recommendations, and in our research, we aim to define the recommendations.

This study, Two-Year Functional Outcomes of Operative vs Nonoperative Treatment of Completely Displaced Midshaft Clavicle Fractures in Adolescents: Results from the Prospective Multicenter FACTS Study Group, was published in the American Journal of Sports Medicine in September 2022.