Sports medicine is becoming increasingly important in family practice, but there is usually a lack of appropriate basic training. In order to close this knowledge gap, Dr. med. Peter Jenoure, former president and honorary member of the Swiss Society of Sports Medicine SGSM as well as member of the editorial board of HAUSARZT PRAXIS, will henceforth report in this column on sports medicine topics relevant to the practitioner.
Hardly a week goes by without the media insistently mentioning that Mrs. and Mr. Swiss are too fat and do not exercise enough. Adolescents do not fare any better, and one even hears from the specialized medical milieu that they already exhibit health disorders that are otherwise only found in older adults.
Various specialists, and now the WHO, state that physical inactivity could become one of the greatest challenges of the 21st century because of its health consequences. The physician in the practice is doubly challenged: He should recognize the manifold pathological phenomena, but also prescribe the right treatment, namely exercise in all its variety. And properly dosed, controlled, and without the frequent drawbacks of conventional forms of therapy.
Always from the same lay press is also regularly heard that sports activities cause year after year in Switzerland alone about 300,000 victims. Even though the vast majority of these sports accidents tend to be benign in nature, they produce quite a bit of suffering, lost work time, and cumulative costs. And again, the doctor is in the front row when it comes to helping these casualties in their quest for the quickest recovery.
So whether his patients do too little or too much sport, the primary care physician is confronted with both situations, the assessment of which is no easy task: he must constantly jump from the more internal medical issues to the clearly more surgical ones, partly as a sports instructor, then as a motivator, but always as a physician. And this is certainly not an easy task with a basic sports medicine training that is still mostly lacking.
To close the knowledge gap, we will report regularly on sports medicine issues starting with this issue of HAUSARZT PRAXIS. We hope you enjoy reading and look forward to your feedback via lg@primemedic.ch.
The editors
HAUSARZT PRAXIS 2014; 9(1): 4
