University of Colorado to host International Extreme Sports Medicine Congress

The first International Extreme Sports Medicine Congress will be held June 13-14 at the University of Colorado in Boulder, Colo.

The brainchild of Omer Mei-Dan, MD, the International Extreme Sports Medicine Congress will bring together the global sports medicine community in an effort to better understand and treat injuries stemming from extreme sports.

“Most [surgeons and doctors] do not fully understand the nuts and bolts of the extreme sports field,” This is a unique but rapidly growing field in sports medicine that deserves a special attention and better understanding. Mei-Dan told Orthopedics Today. “Many of these subjects are of a different breed, and the mental characteristics of the average extreme sports athlete are much different than the casual athlete we are used to encountering in clinic. What this congress will do is educate everyone, whether they are physical therapists, athletic trainers, sports physicians or sports surgeons that they, at times, need to approach these personnel in different ways.”

Another goal of the congress will be to address the unique needs of the extreme athlete. According to Mei-Dan, these needs can be divergent from those of the traditional athlete. “Let’s take shoulder dislocation as an example,” Mei-Dan told Orthopedics Today. “Even if the surgery aiming to stabilize the shoulder was performed the same way from technical stand point, the rehab and the return to play might differ significantly. We have to discern the differences and act accordingly. The result of suboptimal rehab or premature clearance to return to sports activities, in a skydiver, may lead to a recurrent dislocation when trying to open one’s parachute under free-fall, and the consequences are obvious.”
He noted there will be organized events in the surrounding area to accentuate the nature of extreme sports and to give attendees first-hand experience with these activities.

“We are putting together a lot of extreme/adventure sports activities that [attendees] will be able to experience themselves both before and after the meeting, everything from rock climbing and mountain biking to skydiving, trail running, hiking and white-water rafting,” Mei-Dan said.

“The keynote lectures [for the congress’s dinner] are going to be amazing too because it is going to be spiced up a bit with amazing videos of climbing and BASE jumping from all over the world by well-known extreme sports athletes. At the same time, it will also touch on the mental characteristics of the extreme sports athlete, what makes these people tick and why do they do what they do, so that is going to be very cool and fascinating at the same time.”
Further information about the event can be found on the 2014 International Extreme Sports Medicine Congress website. —by Christian Ingram