Sports Medicine Service

The Sports Medicine Service, under the direction of Interim Service Chief Dr. Andrew A. Freiberg, continues to experience exponential growth. A major development has been the establishment of several programs in the Brigham and Women’s/Mass General Health Care Center at Foxborough. Drs. Eric M. Berkson, Luke S. Oh, and Kelly C. McInnis center their practices there.

The Mass General Orthopaedics Sports Performance Center has opened in the Sports Medicine Service. We had a truly outstanding launch event organized by Dr. Berkson and Administrative Director Janine Santimauro. The main focus of the Center, which will work with athletes at all levels of activity, will be the evaluation, study and performance improvement of baseball throwing and golf swinging motions.

Foxborough is also the trial site for the development of a Sports Medicine database, which began on July 1, 2010. A program to inform the local communities of the services offered in Foxborough has started.

Medical coverage for the Boston Red Sox, New England Patriots, Boston Bruins, New England Revolution, and a variety of local high schools and colleges has expanded. Plans are in place to extend the Service’s comprehensive athletic coverage by developing a Women’s Sports Medicine Program with the collaboration of Dr. Ross Zafonte and the Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital. A Center for Concussion Treatment and Research (CCTR) has opened. Concussions in contact sports–from the Pop Warner level to the professional level–are a serious problem that has yet to be addressed in a systematic way. The Primary Care Sports Medicine Clinic, under the direction of Laurence Ronan, MD, has also opened in the Sports Medicine Center, and its patient referrals are growing. The Sports Medicine Fellowship program continues to attract outstanding candidates from around the country. Dr. and Mrs. Zarins hosted a fantastic welcoming event where faculty could meet our new fellows and their families. The Service has a number of visiting fellows and visiting residents from the United States, Europe, and Japan. Broader teaching activities include the Sports Medicine 2010 Course given in collaboration with the Department of Radiology, and the 5th Annual New England Sports Medicine Fellows Course.

There were a number of visiting faculty speakers from around the world during this academic year. Dr. James Andrews was the Fifth Annual Augustus Thorndike Lecturer. Doctor Andrews is internationally known and recognized for his skills as an orthopaedic surgeon as well as his scientific and clinical research contributions in knee, shoulder and elbow injury prevention and treatment. In addition, he has made major presentations around the world, and has authored numerous scientific articles and books. He is one of the founding members of Andrews Sports Medicine and Orthopaedic Center in Birmingham, Alabama and also a founder of the American Sports Medicine Institute (ASMI) a non-profit institute dedicated to injury prevention, education and research in orthopaedics and sports medicine.

The Sports Medicine Research program remains very productive, and has grown due to its affiliation with the Bioengineering Laboratory under the direction of Dr. Guoan Li, the Laboratory for Musculoskeletal Tissue Engineering with Mark Randolph, the Media Laboratory at MIT with Dr. Joseph Paradiso, Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital in association with Dr. Ross Zafonte, and the Department of Human Evolution at Harvard College in collaboration with Dr. Daniel Lieberman. Recent grants from the NFL Charities (for Drs. Gill and Berkson) and the NIH (for Dr. Gill and Mr. Randolph) have added substantial support to these programs. A new initiative on the use of platelet-rich plasma (PRP) has been undertaken by Drs. McInnis and Berkson. In the academic year 2010-2011, the faculty of the Sports Medicine Service published 22 papers. To enhance its teaching capabilities, the Sports Medicine Service established the Dinesh Patel, MD, Arthroscopy Learning Laboratory in which knee, shoulder, and ankle models are available for the fellows and residents to practice surgical techniques. Plans are underway to expand this educational opportunity even more broadly. Members of the Service also oversee training for the residents and fellows in local cadaver arthroscopy labs.

Sports Medicine Service physicians have received a number of recent honors. Harvard University honored Dr. Arthur L. Boland with the establishment of the Arthur L. Boland Award for an outstanding graduating senior athlete who plans to attend medical school. Drs. Bonvaronit Chuckpaiwong, Eric Berkson, and George Theodore were awarded the Nicola’s Foundation Young Researcher Award of the International Society of Arthroscopy, Knee Surgery and Orthopaedic Sports Medicine in Osaka, Japan.

The Sports Medicine Service and the Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital play a major role in the study of traumatic brain injury as part of the Home Base Program. A collaborative effort between the Red Sox Foundation and the MGH, the Home Base Program provides diagnosis, treatment, and rehabilitation to veterans with traumatic brain injury and post-traumatic stress disorder.

A growing focus of the Sports Medicine Service is to treat athletic injuries, including concussions in young people, and to develop sound criteria for return-to-play (parallel to our work to develop return-to-combat criteria for the military).

Congratulations to the Sports Medicine Service on all these wonderful accomplishments!