May 07, 2004

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Publication Date: Friday, May 07, 2004

ValleyCare launches sports medicine program

ValleyCare Health System has launched a sports management and medicine program for teenagers that is focused on injury prevention as much as on treatment.

Neil Sol, vice president of outpatient services at ValleyCare, said the program will involve doctors, physical therapists and psychologists as well as others in sports medicine related services. Called the LifeStyleRx Sports Medicine Program, after ValleyCare's trademarked LifeStyleRx fitness center in Livermore, the new service will offer counseling, training and follow-up evaluation services to community, club, high school and college athletic teams in the Tri-Valley.

"What we have found is that a lot of high school kids and young athletes are going elsewhere for sports medicine programs," Sol told ValleyCare board of directors at a meeting last week. "Through this new program, we hope to recapture that interest."

According to Sol: ¥ 58 percent of all teenagers in the Tri-Valley are on at least one sports team. ¥ 49 percent of all teenage injuries here are sports related. ¥ In 2002, 800 teenagers in the Tri-Valley suffered sports-related injuries that required some kind of surgical care.

To reduce injuries, the ValleyCare program will provide trainers at the high schools to make sure athletes are in condition to play varsity games, and will actually conduct training and conditioning exercises while supervising team play.

"We will be attending practices and games, talking to these young athletes on a daily basis, and supervising the conditioning at the local schools where we have our programs," Sol said. "This will be a multi-disciplinary team of physicians and trainers that will be evaluating the readiness of athletes starting with the upcoming season."

As part of the program, ValleyCare will help to equip local schools with automatic electronic defibrillators (AEDs), which can offer prompt therapy in the event an athlete suffers sudden cardiac arrest. More than 90 percent of cardiac arrest victims survive when defibrillation occurs within two minutes, which the new AEDs can provide.

"Coaches, team boosters and PTAs are requiring that high schools have these electronic defibrillators that do not require medical training to utilize," Sol said. "If someone goes into cardiac arrest, these can be used quickly and expertly."

Part of the new program also includes talking to parents of young athletes to make sure their children have the conditioning it takes to participate in the sports they play, whether it's soccer, basketball, football or water polo.

"We believe that you have to be in good shape to play sports, and that you don't start playing sports to get in shape," Sol said.

Sol said Las Positas College and Amador Valley, Granada and California high schools have signed up for the program, which will start this summer.

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