Injury Management

Amputation is one of the oldest surgical procedure and a good amputation results in optimal functional outcome by providing healthy residual limb. Advances in prosthetics has enabled amputee with diverse options and better functionality. There is also decrease in the overall burden of amputation as a result of better treatment of causative disorders and proper limb salvage techniques. Complications, however, pose challenges in regain of necessary functions and include an array of disorders related to the procedure, technique and other factors. An understanding of common and practical complications is helpful in their anticipation and relevant prohibitive measures. Apart from it, a comprehensive study that highlights pattern of amputations and related complications provides database for preventive and management strategy. A total of 69 cases of extremity amputations were included within a defined period of Jan 2011 to June 2016. Relevant demographic data were noted along with other details amputation and complications. An attempt is also made for co-morbidities associated in cases with complications. Males (88.40%) and lower extremity (66.66%) were involved more commonly than females and upper extremity. Below knee was commonest (50.72%) lower and below elbow along with digital amputations were commonest (15.94% each) upper extremity amputations. The significant complication that required increased hospital stay or additional procedures were noted in 34 (49.27%) cases. Delayed wound healing, wound dehiscence, painful neuroma, stiffness, exposed bone and phantom pain were some of major complication noted in the study. A brief notes on patient characteristics has been attributed to the nature of trauma, co-morbidities and substance abuse among the complicated cases. The early recognition of complication and prompt management goes a long way in abetment of agony and discomfort of patient affecting overall outcome. Introduction Amputation is one of the oldest surgical intervention and staged procedure for variety of indications compromising the vitality of limb and at times life [1]. It is to be considered as a reconstructive procedure and is not mere removal of useless body part. The level and underlying culprit causes are of little concern now as advances in prosthetics has given us diversity and functionality that was akin to fiction in the past. Amputation aims to restore function and better results are met with team efforts. Apart from patient, doctor and prosthetist, moral support of family and close ones and at times psychological support is also critical for the optimal outcome [2]. The knowledge of common risk factor and types of amputations as well as complications helps clinician better anticipate and prevent those.

This research project assesses the factors, both on and away from the instrument, contributing to musculoskeletal pain among current tertiary drum kit players in Australia. Whilst performing arts medicine continues to grow as a research field, a lack of information and primary research exists for drum kit players wanting to take better care of their health and prevent playing-related injuries. Two new methods of data collection have been created, the Drummers’ Health and Pain Assessment Questionnaire and the Summary Index of Participants Self-Reported Pain, in order to assess the current state of health and injury prevention awareness within both drum kit majors and percussion majors who regularly play drum kit. Specifically, these methods generate new data concerning playing habits, the prevalence of PRMDs, injury history and treatment, most affected pain regions, internal/external pressures, general health, and stress levels.

Factor analysis has been undertaken along with a deconstruction of the questionnaire responses, and the researcher’s autoethnographic reflections geared towards optimal performance preparation in order to reveal emerging trends, patterns and overall findings. The outcomes of this study indicate that musculoskeletal problems are of concern to tertiary drum kit players and are exacerbated by contributing factors away from the instrument including performance anxiety, fatigue, stress, inconsistent warm up routines, lugging gear and a lack of muscular strength. My own experience of suffering a playing-related injury has sparked my interest in performing arts medicine and my desire to: 1) contribute new knowledge to the field; 2) provide new research data collection methods relevant to drum kit players; and 3) increase the awareness of injury risk factors and prevention for drummers, percussionists and educators of all levels.

"Martial Arts are understood primarily from a cultural perspective, derived from the social influences which generated them. There is currently no formally proposed framework to study Martial Arts purely from a functionalist perspective.

This paper proposes that Cybernetics may be used to identify the specific physical problems brought about by inter-personal conflict, as well as identify the finite solutions to them.

The aim is to propose Cybernetics as a suitable framework for this investigation by demonstrating it's value to Martial Arts research."

"There has been little research into the psychological factors affecting footballers at different levels (Hanin et al, 2000), in particular, the mental toughness and hardiness of footballers.

The aim of the present study was to investigate the relationship between mental toughness and hardiness of footballers and the level of football at which they perform.

Participants - 61 footballers (mean AGE=25.23 years; range 18-40 years; SD=5.55), from various clubs and 2 levels of performance.
Mental toughness was measured using the Psychological Performance Inventory (PPI; Loehr, 1986).
Hardiness was measured using the Personal views survey III- R (Maddi and Khoshaba 2001).

Elite footballers scored significantly higher than recreational footballers in overall mental toughness, hardiness and each individual subscale, (Golby & Sheard, 2004).

While the present study confirms that elite footballers have superior levels of mental toughness and hardiness than recreational footballers, future research might concentrate further on psychological skills training, coping strategies and psychological preparation strategies in a wider variation of sports specific to a wider range of athletes, from grass roots to international level.
"

The detection of double edges in x-ray images of lumbar vertebrae is of prime importance in the assessment of vertebral injury or collapse that may be caused by osteoporosis and other spine pathology. In addition, if the above double-edge detection process is conducted within an automatic framework, it would not only facilitate inexpensive and fast means of obtaining objective morphometric measurements on the spine, but also remove the human subjectivity involved in the morphometric analysis. This paper proposes a novel force-formulation scheme, termed as Pressurized Open Directional Gradient Vector Flow snakes, to discriminate and detect the superior and inferior double edges present in the radiographic images of the lumbar vertebrae. As part of the validation process, this algorithm is applied to a set of 100 lumbar images and the detection results are quantified using analyst-generated ground truth. The promising nature of the detection results bears testimony to the efficacy of the proposed approach

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"Coaching has a long history in athletics, dating back to the era of professional  pedestrians such as Captain Barclay. By the early twentieth century, because  of the dominance of the amateur hegemony, the notion of coaching in British  athletics was in retreat. Governing bodies like the Amateur Athletics  Association associated coaching with professionalism. However, due to the  rise in international competition, especially the Olympic Games, this idea was reconsidered. As Britain began to slip from its place as the pre-eminent  sporting nation, coaching took on a greater significance among the athletics  hierarchy at least as far back as 1912. This article examines this process from  1912 to 1947, when criticism over Britain’s performance increasingly began  to be thought of as a reflection of national prestige and the fitness of the
nation. In addition, it locates coaching developments not only within the  shifting nature of amateurism but argues that coaching itself had an  important role in changing the subtle and complex meanings of amateurism."

In this physiology assignment discusses how the cardio-respiratory systems facilitate the energy systems that are used during a peak performance of a marathon runner with a sub 2 hr 40 race time. Also  suggests and justifies a physiological assessment which could be used to help understand the person’s fitness and specific physiological responses to exercise.

Page, C.G. and Pears, D. (2013) The Effect Birth Date Has On Choosing To Study A
Sports Related Course At An Educational Institution.
Purpose: The Relative Age Effect (RAE) in the academic study of sport. The aim of
this study was to investigate the relationship of those students being born on a
certain date will indeed influence the decision to study a sports related course at an
educational institution.
Methods: Contacted various levels of educational institutions and requested student
information from sport related academic courses such as their date of birth, gender
and course title. The gatekeeper and the data managers securely passed the
relevant information requested. Organised and arranged data collection into three
birth date month groups; September-December, January-April and May-August
within appropriate statistical software and spreadsheet software.
Results: Statistical analysis was determined where appropriate using Chi-Square
tests and formulas. The main findings show there to be significant results in the birth
dates of an individual and studying a sports academic course as with the distribution
of births across all levels of education were not equally distributed throughout the
year. The observed frequencies showed the birth date is highest for the months of
September-December and lowest for the spring and summer months. It also showed
an over populace representation of male students compared to females who are
studying a sport related academic course at an educational institution.
Conclusions: Therefore it can be derived from the results presented that the birth
date did have a large influence on choosing to study a sports related course at an
educational institution.
Key Words: Relative Age Effect, birth date grouping, gender bias, sports academia."

Background In an era of shifting global agendas and expanded emphasis on non-communicable diseases and injuries along with communicable diseases, sound evidence on trends by cause at the national level is essential. The Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors Study (GBD) provides a systematic scientific assessment of published, publicly available, and contributed data on incidence, prevalence, and mortality for a mutually exclusive and collectively exhaustive list of diseases and injuries.

Policing is one of the riskiest and dangerous professions by its nature. Police officers face a range of risks at work: homicide, assaults, attacks, communicable diseases, car crashes or explosions. The risks vary according to the task being undertaken such as arresting offenders, attending street disturbances or performing traffic duties. These risks, having the characteristics of occupational accident in a way, have institutional losses like compensation, loss of manpower and reputation besides individual results like injury, death, mutilation, and posttraumatic stress disorder, exposure to psychological disorders or decrease in quality of life. Opinions and suggestions of 1066 employees currently working at different ranks and units in Turkish National Police in regards with reducing the risks of occupational accidents and safety risks were studied in this research. Suggestions of the participants were reviewed under total nine headings (themes) consisting of training, physical fitness and health, security measures, institutional policies and procedures, managerial policies, working conditions, equipment, uniforms, and patrol cars.

Lancet 2010; 375: 89–91:
Panel: Key initiatives
• Community education about improved prevention and preclinical care on the basis of the specific needs of different regions, consistent advocacy, and comprehensive community engagement
• Improved injury surveillance, and advocacy for making snake bite a notifiable disease so that reporting becomes mandatory at local, national, and regional levels
• Further clinical and basic research with focus on an improved understanding of injury mechanisms and optimisation of interventions
• Systematic approaches to improve medical management,
education, and training of medical and paramedical personnel, focusing on the specific needs of different regions (teaching materials should be developed by those with first-hand experience of treating snake bites)
• Functional support for the prequalification of antivenoms (the only specific antidote for envenoming), research to improve their safety and clinical eff ectiveness, and storage conditions and hence shelf life
• Promotion of rehabilitation and prevention of disability through engagement with established stakeholders in this field so that the physical, economic, and psychological handicaps resulting from snake bite are kept to a minimum
• Build effective public health policy and governance frameworks, and create innovative fi nancing bridges to enable programmes to be put into practice