our nephew is a cardiologist in Birmingham and was visiting this weekend. The practice he works in sees a lot of the athletes in the region, and he was saying that with more sophistication in the examination process, they can find obscure maladies that would never have been discovered before. he has only been in the field for 5 years and that short time he is seeing increased advice to for athletes to give up their sport. I asked him about the death rate, and he said the physicians are just getting more conservative in their advice. The older docs would tend to let them play more than the young docs. He said their is a local HS FB player who is pretty good being recruited by SEC and has been advised to hang it up, but continues to play.
A couple of their more experienced docs do NFL physicals. He was telling us that the physical that the NFL teams do now is way more sophisticated than even 20 years ago. Now they do imaging of everything - heart, shoulders, knees, back, ankles, etc. The analyze muscles, joints, etc. with equipment and not just examination. I was curious about this (hey I would love a $40k exam for my piece of mind) and the level of effort. He said the new thinking is that most injuries never actually heal, and repeated injuries to the same area are a risk teams want to understand better, so they are forking over the $$$. we are in a new world.
A couple of their more experienced docs do NFL physicals. He was telling us that the physical that the NFL teams do now is way more sophisticated than even 20 years ago. Now they do imaging of everything - heart, shoulders, knees, back, ankles, etc. The analyze muscles, joints, etc. with equipment and not just examination. I was curious about this (hey I would love a $40k exam for my piece of mind) and the level of effort. He said the new thinking is that most injuries never actually heal, and repeated injuries to the same area are a risk teams want to understand better, so they are forking over the $$$. we are in a new world.
