From the weekend warrior to the high performance professional athlete, many face the problem of an injury that stems from exercise or high-impact activity. Sports Medicine is a specialty area of medicine concerned with treating, and preventing, injuries resulting from sports activity.

The most common procedures in sports medicine are those done to repair injuries to the tendons and ligaments, nerves, blood vessels, and joints and fractured bones; and many of the procedures can be preformed arthroscopically.

Shoulder
Shoulder injuries are common to athletes who play tennis, golf and baseball. The overhead motion of a tennis serve, a pitching motion and golf swing all serve to aggravate the shoulder joint and tendons surrounding it.

Two of the most common diagnoses given are “shoulder bursitis” or “shoulder tendinitis”. Shoulder bursitis and rotator cuff tendinitis, are both just a way of saying that there is inflammation of a particular area within the shoulder.

See Shoulder Surgery to learn more

Elbow
One of the more common aliments of the elbow is spurs. Years of overhead activities such as pitching, tennis, etc., and the continual use typically precipitate these spurs and motion in the joint has produced swollen bone linings that have developed spurs.

See Elbow Surgery to learn more

Knee
The knee has four basic ligaments holding it in place, one at each side to stop the bones sliding sideways and two crossing over in the middle to stop the bones sliding forward and backward. There are several common knee problems that affect this area:

• Meniscus Tears, which may cause your knees to catch or lock when you move
• ACL Ligament Tears, which produce an unstable knee
• Cartilage Wear
• Damage to the cartilage under the kneecap

See Knee Surgery to learn more