Piccioni G, Rossetti F
Istituto Clínic Città di Brescia, ITÀLIA
The presence of painful symptoms in the spine of an athlete suggests the doubt whether the pathology is specifically related with the sport or whether it is independent.
We begin with the description of the conditions that can cause the pain in young people’s rachis distinguishing: the alterations of the vertebral axis, spondylolysis and spondylolisthesis, congenital malformations of the vertebral column, inflammatory causes, degenerative causes, benign tumours of the vertebral column.
For each group we describe the symptoms and the most frequent characteristics.
After that, we pay attention to the rachis pains caused by practicing the sport, taking the activities that cause the overload on the vertebral column into account. We study the behaviour of the vertebral column in winter sports and skating, defining the relationship between the morphology of the curves of the physiological sagittal overload and the pain, and then we talk about medical and physical therapy and surgical history in different cases.
The authors finally describe the surgical techniques that they use, with indications and limitations for the young athletes.
