Imaging in Sports Medicine—An Overview

Abstract

Abstract
Explosion in the knowledge of, interest in, and public visibility of the field of sports medicine over the last decade has equipped clinicians in the field with a wealth of exciting new options diagnostically and therapeutically, but also with a new level of complexity. As specific populations become increasingly active in sport, the challenges of evaluating sport-related injury can overwhelm the physician and staff. The need to stay at the cutting edge of the fund of knowledge surrounding the diagnositic evaluation of musculoskeletal injury in particular has never been greater. Advances, especially in the areas of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), diagnostic office ultrasound, 3D reconstruction computed tomography (CT), and nuclear medicine, offer the clinician myriad diagnostic options in patient evaluation. As these advances accumulate, however, the challenge of optimizing care, containing costs, and interpreting the extensive data generated becomes ever more difficult to manage. Communication with the patient continues to gain new degrees of complexity as a greater understanding of the presence of radiographic abnormalities irrelevant to the current complaint is gained. All of the accumulated data must then be interpreted and communicated to the patient with a firm foundation and understanding of not only the patient history and physical examination, but also the availability, indications, contraindications, sensitivity, specificity, and even the cost implications of the great spectrum of diagnostic options.

Keywords
Sports, athletes, radiology, sports medicine, injury, X-ray, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), computed tomography (CT), ultrasound, bone scan

Disclosure: The authors have no conflicts of interest to declare.
Received: January 27, 2010 Accepted: March 1, 2010 Citation: US Musculoskeletal Review, 2010;5:11–18
Correspondence: Eric E Coris, MD, Associate Professor, Department of Orthopaedics and Sports Medicine, Department of Family Medicine, Director, Division of Primary Care Sports Medicine, University of South Florida College of Medicine, 12901 Bruce B Downs Blvd, MDC 13, Tampa, FL 33612. E: ecoris@health.usf.edu