Since then, we’ve been as busy as we’ve ever been, as there’s been a huge uptake in outdoor sports enthusiasts getting out this year, much like we have seen throughout all of the outdoor industries. Trying to offset that burden helped us feel like we were doing our part. Admittingly, the US healthcare system is difficult to navigate and the default place to go for even minor injuries is typically the ED. That message was spread via different local groups and we were able to help keep the major hospitals freed up of injuries that were more appropriately managed in a clinic setting. This was to try to keep the E.R.’s free of people who didn’t need to be there. We wanted to find a way to help out the community and offset the potential load to the local emergency departments, so we started work with local healthcare organizations to encourage people who had non-life threatening injuries to come directly to our clinic instead of the E.R. In March our practice slowed way down, and some days I had almost no patients. Has 2020 been a weird year to be a sports medicine doc? I’m glad he went in things could have gotten really ugly. He ended up in the hospital for about four days, so I checked in on him to make sure he was doing ok. When I went into work the next day, there he was, and sure enough, he had seven broken ribs and a punctured lung. I think telling him that I wanted an ambulance to take him to the hospital helped him understand the gravity of the situation. ![]() I told him he needed to get to the hospital ASAP, got him to his car and convinced him to get evaluated. I did a quick evaluation, and it felt like he’d broken at least a few ribs and potentially punctured a lung. He said he had some pain in his ribs after a crash, but seemed to want to get out of there and go home, and didn’t think he needed to go to the hospital. I was off the clock riding a trail and came across a guy who looked pretty beat up. I was working at a clinic, filling some open shifts when they needed help. What’s the craziest thing you’ve seen related to your job? Last week one of my patients asked, “Hey can I cut off my cast myself so I can go riding?” No, you can’t. Because of that, I sometimes have to pull back the reins on riders, telling them to wait until their body is healed and ready to go. The average rider rides for fun, it is something they truly enjoy and are passionate about. I think mountain biking, in that respect, is different. More frequently in other sports, I will see athletes that are hesitant to get back to what they were doing previously. Most of them are motivated, and want to get back on their bikes as soon as possible. I enjoy seeing mountain bikers, and not just because I am one. ![]() It’s a very dynamic activity, meaning that the body doesn’t use the same muscles over and over again, but it’s dangerous, which means traumas.ĭo riders have different attitudes than others? Mountain bikers are usually seen for trauma: broken collarbones, wrists, ribs, concussions, or other crash-related injuries. This can cause issues in the tendons, ligaments, bones, and muscle fibers over time. Gymnastics, cross-country runners, tennis players, and even road bikers typically have overuse problems as those sports involve long practices consisting of very repetitive motions or high volumes of continuous micro-trauma. The major split between mountain bikers and other patients is trauma vs. How do mountain bikers differ from your other patients in terms of injury type? A large portion of our patients however are skiers, climbers, trail runners and in growing numbers, mountain bikers. I see the people you’d typically associate with sports medicine: football, soccer, tennis and others. ![]() Utah is full of both traditional and extreme sports enthusiasts. What kinds of patients do you typically see in Utah? We did a Q&A with him to see what it’s like being a doctor in a mountain bike hub. “Downhill” Brill works in a practice outside of Salt Lake City, Utah.
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