Sports-specific concerns in the young athlete: Soccer

This article on soccer marks the first of a biannual series on sports-speci fic injury. Sports-related injury in the young athlete has become an issue of increasing importance to both emergency physicians and the pediatric com munity at large. Across America, increasing numbers of children and adolesc ents are participating in youth sports, a trend that translates into increa sing numbers of injured young athletes interfacing with the medical system. This series of reviews is designed to provide a better understanding of sp orts-specific patterns, with the hope of assisting the emergency physician in the diagnosis and treatment of sports-related injury. From an epidemiologic perspective, sports-related trauma is an area of trem endous research potential. For reasons that are not entirely clear, there i s a paucity of research on sports injury being undertaken within emergency departments. Since the majority of patients with sports injuries of a serio us nature initially seek care in the emergency department, an opportunity e xists for significant intervention and epidemiologic study within this sett ing. Therefore, these sports-specific reviews are intended not only to educ ate readers about the specific injury data and injury patterns found in cer tain sports, but also to stimulate further research on this topic. Finally, from an educational perspective, these sports-specific reviews are designed to further facilitate the incorporation of Sports Medicine teachi ng into the pediatric curriculum. Unfortunately, the teaching of proper mus culoskeletal evaluation and treatment has received little emphasis in the t raditional pediatric residency program. We believe that the evolving demogr aphics of childhood morbidity, as witnessed by the increasing frequency of sports-related trauma in young athletes, should prompt the pediatric commun ity to put greater emphasis on including instruction in musculoskeletal med icine in pediatric training programs. Therefore, we hope that this series o f articles will hasten the introduction of a formal Sports Medicine curricu lum into residency training. We hope that you enjoy this initial submission on soccer. Please let us kno w Lour thoughts on this article so that we may continue to revise the forma t to make these reviews as useful as possible.