If you are a parent in the Orange Park, FL area, and you have children eager to play sports at school or in other leagues, be sure they get sports physicals. According to University of Pennsylvania Medical Center, sports physicals, also known as “pre-participation exams (PPE), are exams that help determine whether it’s safe for a child or adolescent to participate in physical activity.”
They are not always required but are still advised because they ensure that a child remains safe regardless of the intensity of the activity. While it is meant to look for any undiagnosed and life-threatening issues such as a heart condition, it also looks at past injuries such as concussions, old musculoskeletal injuries, joint injuries and more.
It is something that a child’s doctor might do, but it is far more advisable to work with a team of expert diagnosticians. This is because the typical sports physicals check on knee instability, elbow dislocation, femur fracture, and issues like irregular heartbeat or abdominal mass. A regular pediatric or doctor’s visit is not going to have the kind of advanced diagnostic tools that a clinic specializing in injury can provide.
That is why parents in the Orange Park area will want to have their children’s sports physicals at the Injury Care Center. Specializing in the diagnosis and treatment of injuries (most often due to auto accidents, slip and fall injuries or workplace issues), they can also spot the kinds of physical issues that might result in a child needing to be restricted in certain areas of athletic participation.
While it is true that the standard physical includes injury history, medical history, vital signs, a general exam and cardiovascular history (which a child’s physician will have on hand), they cannot know if past injuries create a vulnerability in that child. The kinds of experience that clinical doctors have with injury can become invaluable during sports physicals. They can better identify signs of trouble in an x-ray or limited mobility that is the result of an old injury.
Ensure your kids enjoy the safest and healthiest sports seasons by getting their physicals with the most appropriate medical experts. Though a pediatrician does have a child’s full medical history, you also want their current level of health and fitness for sports to be considered, and that is something that experts in injuries provide.
