Dr. Peter Gambacorta - Speaker
Dr. Peter Gambacorta is the Medical Director for Adolescent Sports Medicine at Children's Hospital, and he focuses on pediatric orthopedics, and dance medicine. His mission is to provide focused pediatric orthopedic care.
Pediatric injuries due to sports are happening more and more and are becoming chronic. Last year in the US over 2 million children suffered from sports related injuries. The sharp increase in youth sports injuries is a result of several factors including an increase in the number of sports scholarships being offered (especially to females), younger kids playing at higher levels, kids concentrating on only one sport, rather than diversifying and using different muscle groups for other sports activities. Dr. Gambacorta wants everyone to understand that a child is not a little adult. They grow and develop in different ways and to different degrees as adults, so they can't be treated the same as adults.
More than 1/2 of all sports related youth injuries can be prevented, says a group called the Coalition to Stop Youth Sports Injuries (you can visit their website at www.stopsportsinjuries.org). But some of the things that can be done to help the kids are: get a pre-season physical, in many cases some kids just shouldn't be playing the sports they intend to try out for; encourage warm ups and cool downs, very important, especially for youth; have proper strength training; use and maintain proper equipment (not a good area to "cheap out"); encourage them to speak to a coach, trainer, parent, or physician when in pain (it's never a good idea to "play through the pain").
Dr. Gambacorta also does joint preservation through surgery, and in fact is one of only a handful of surgeons who perform arthoscopic hip surgery in WNY. Previously this type of minimally invasive surgery was performed on knees and other joints, but was not used on hips.