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Sports Illustrated: Nomar’s heel needs time to heal
The Boston Red Sox started the season without All-Star shortstop Nomar Garciaparra, who was placed on the disabled list in late March with an injured right Achilles tendon. According to the April 14 Sports Illustrated, his return to the lineup is uncertain because an injured Achilles tendon — the largest tendon in the body — requires a lengthy recovery. “One of the problems with it is, once you have an Achilles injury, the healing process is relatively long,” says Anthony Schepsis, a MED assistant professor and an orthopedic surgeon at Boston Medical Center. “And as you try to push through it, the chances of it becoming a chronic problem increase dramatically. If [an athlete] tries to come back early, you end up losing more time than you gain.” The Red Sox would like Garciaparra to return in early May, but Schepsis cautions that the injury is a notorious slow-healer; the blood supply to the tendon and the surrounding area is not as good as elsewhere in the body. Pushing too hard can inflame the tendon, or worse, cause it to tear or rupture. Age is also a factor in the likelihood of reinjury. The older the athlete — Garciaparra is 30 — the more likely it is that stretching or even walking could aggravate the tendon.
Boston Globe: Clean running
The abuse of endurance-enhancing drugs by marathoners, triathletes, and long-distance cyclists is rare, but also hard to detect, reports the April 19 Boston Globe. At this year’s Boston Marathon, officials will take urine samples at random from the race’s top finishers to test for a variety of substances, such as steroids and ephedrine. But of greater concern to officials, as well as others in the athletic community, is erythropoietin, or EPO. After the federal government approved the drug in 1989 as a treatment for anemia, some athletes started injecting it to boost their production of red blood cells, which carry oxygen to the muscles. “In effect, it’s very analogous with what you would see with blood doping,” says Roger Fielding, a SAR associate professor of health sciences, referring to the banned practice of injecting a donor’s blood or a reserve of one’s own stored blood to increase the body’s supply of red cells. “By improving the oxygen-carrying capacity of your blood,” he says, “it essentially can improve your ability to perform endurance-type activities like the marathon.” While EPO’s benefits can last up to four months, half of a dose disappears from an athlete’s system in two weeks, making it hard to detect.
HealthDay: C-sections pose high risk to moms and their babies
According to the nonprofit Maternity Center Association, a group promoting safe maternity care, the number of Caesarean sections performed in the United States has increased from 5.5 percent of births in 1970 to 26.1 percent in 2002. At a recent association-sponsored conference held at the New York Academy of Medicine, doctors and health professionals reported that women who chose C-sections for nonmedical reasons experienced more medical problems and their babies were at greater risk than if they had undergone a vaginal delivery, reports the April 20 HealthDay. Conference panelists said that C-sections carry a higher risk of pain and infection after surgery for the mother as well as the potential for problems with future pregnancies, while babies delivered by C-section are less likely to be breast-fed, have a higher risk for asthma, and are more likely to have respiratory problems if they are delivered before the 39th week of pregnancy. “Choosing whether to have a vaginal delivery or an elective Caesarean section is based on the premise that these two choices are essentially equivalent, but this is simply not true,” said conference panelist Eugene Declercq, a School of Public Health professor of maternal and child health and assistant dean for doctoral education. “The choice is between one that carries a greater risk than the other.”
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April 2004
Boston University
Office of University Relations