Month: April 2016

Further Reading on Sports Injuries in Kids

Pediatric orthopedic care demands a special constellation of skills. Kids are still growing, and their bodies are changing rapidly, so planning for the body’s natural development is paramount.

Understanding what kind of injury your child has – chronic or acute, serious or minor – requires an expert assessment of your kids’ symptoms and presentation. This page offers a good overview of the various questions involved, along with a rubric you can use to evaluate the intensity of your child’s impairment.

Although the article includes a lot of good advice, this last bit is especially well-advised:

Take Every Injury Seriously
It is important to remember that even if an orthopedic injury does not look serious, underlying structures may be severely compromised. An in-depth assessment and appropriate treatment are important to ensure you don’t worsen the injury. . .. Reviewing the causes, signs and symptoms, and treatments is important to providing quality care.

For the highest standard in pediatric orthopedic treatment in San Diego, please contact Dr. William Holland’s orthopedic surgery offices here.

Treatment Options for Chronic Shoulder Pain

When is it wise to treat shoulder pain medically, and when is it time for shoulder surgery? It’s a question that has no universal answers; typically patients and their orthopedic surgeons make this determination together based on the length of the discomfort and the severity of the pain.

As this recent piece from the Chicago Tribune says, surgery is a last option, but hardly an excessively aggressive one:

The choice of treatments vary with the cause and severity of the shoulder pain. Minor pain can be addressed by applying a cold pack to the shoulder over a period of time. More severe conditions may require immobilizing the shoulder with a sling, prescribing anti-inflammatory drugs or injections or working with a physical therapist. If there is a serious injury to the shoulder, surgery to repair the damage is often the best option.

My San Diego orthopedic practice cares for shoulder injuries of every kind, from impingements and frozen shoulder to disease and trauma. Your shoulder pain should never be chronic when you have smart options available to you.

Want to learn more about the best shoulder pain treatment in San Diego? Call my offices today.

New Guidelines Coming in Pediatric Orthopedics

Scoliosis has been a scourge of pediatric orthopedics for hundreds of years, but it wasn’t until recently that the full ebenfit of early detection could be measured. Now that we have better data, it seems likely that pediatricians and pediatric orthopedic specialists, will receive new guidance on the use of detection and bracing in young patients:

Early detection of scoliosis is mandatory in order to offer patients nonoperative methods to prevent progression of the condition. Nonoperative management is preferred by patients when there is a reasonable chance of success. Over two thirds of the patients in the patient preference arm of the BrAIST preferred bracing over observation. We can offer nonoperative treatment for idiopathic scoliosis only when detected in the mild to moderate stage, which is why early recognition and diagnosis is important,” Hresko told Spine Surgery Today.

It is an interesting dichotomy in pediatric orthopedics: some disorders demand a wait-and-see approach, while others demand the earliest possible intervention. In scoliosis, when bones are still growing, corrective measures can have a salutary effect down the line, not unlike braces for teeth.

Whether your child is suffering from a chronic orthopedic condition or an injury in need of expert treatment, we can help. Contact Dr. Bill Holland at the American Orthopedic and Sports Medicine Center today.

How to Treat Tennis Elbow

Tennis elbow: it’s not just for tennis anymore. Most people who have seen the inside of an orthopedic office know that this common malady is misnamed, but a surprising number of athletes and laborers do not.

The simple truth about tennis elbow is that it is most often caused by dragging, lifting, or playing sports (other than tennis) with hard-to-control equipment. Typically the elbow pain is the same no matter what its source: a sharply aching joint that doesn’t get much better with rest.

Tennis elbow shares a similar issue – pain – with other elbow symptoms, but can be distinguished by its placement. Typically tennis elbow involves pain on the outside of the elbow, sometimes extended to the back of the hand. This is different from similar elbow diagnoses:

[T]here are some symptoms that are often mistaken for tennis elbow, such as pain in the inside of the elbow joint, also known as Golfer’s Elbow. Another condition is pain at the back of the elbow, called Bursitis, which is caused by a cyst.

To find out for sure how to treat your tennis elbow, contact a San Diego orthopedist or schedule an appointment here.

Treating Knee Pain in San Diego

We live in a city where cycling has become an increasingly common mode of transport. As more people awaken to the concerns around automobiles, and still more join the fitness movement, it seems not a day goes by without bike lines appearing on new San Diego roads.

But cycling is not a zero-impact activity, and the rise in cycling has caused a concomitant rise in knee pain and its associated injuries. This article explains why: cycling position can be a notoriously tricky thing to perfect, and pain in the front of the knee or the back of the knee can be traced to different errors in fundamental positioning:

“A saddle that is too low will cause your knee angle to be too tight at the top of the stroke, which increases the shear forces pulling the patella against the femur, which in turn increases the likelihood of tendonitis and harmful stresses in the cartilage behind the kneecap,” says Veal. “Likewise when the cranks are too long for your leg length, the knee joint is also too tight at the top of the stroke.”

The reverse is true for pain in the back of the knee. Some people opt for help from cycling shops or pros to nail the right position, while others just tinker until they find some measure of comfort.

But if you can’t seem to shake that pain in your knee? Visit the best orthopedist in San Diego to get a full workup and learn more about how you can combat these stresses without getting off the saddle.

A Milestone for Pediatric Orthopedics

As a pediatric orthopedist who treats a great number of hand and wrist injuries, I hear a lot about advances in the field. Recently the orthopedic community celebrated a milestone in this area of medicine: the world’s first pediatric double hand transplant.

The video alone is worth watching for its warmth and clarity:

 

Needless to say, the intricacies of procedures such as this one are staggering, as they can involve every tissue type along with the recondite questions about matching, immunity, and growth. It remains to be seen how this patient’s hands will develop, but the initial success of the surgery is cause enough for optimism.

I am proud to be considered one of the best pediatric orthopedists in San Diego. If your child has suffered an injury or chronic pain in the shoulder, elbow, wrist or hand, please don’t hesitate to contact my offices for a consultation today.