Operative treatment in non-emergency sports injuries: a sports medicine clinic experience

ABSTRACT

Purpose

To elucidate referrals from sports medicine clinic (SMC) to orthopedics, consensus rates among physicians and surgeons on surgical need in these patients, and reasoning of the patients who refused to have surgery despite the recommendations by both groups in non-emergency sports injury patients.

Methods

We conducted a retrospective cohort analysis by using the administrative and referral records of a sports medicine clinic for the 15 months between October 2017 and January 2019. Gender, age, diagnosis, and type of sport were compared between two groups (patients referred to orthopedics vs patients treated in SMC). Agreement between orthopedics and SMC on surgical need in those patients who were referred to orthopedics was evaluated. We additionally screened the hospital archive for surgery reports of patients recommended surgery, and, if a patient did not have a surgery record, we investigated the reasons by telephone interview and categorized these reasons.

Results

Surgical evaluation needed for 4.7% (n = 155) of the patients. Patients referred to orthopedics were younger (median: 22.0 years), mostly male (n = 119, 76.8%), and involved in contact sports (n = 108, 69.7%) (p < 0.001 for all) compared to patients treated conservatively. Majority of the consultations were made owing to certain diagnoses such as cruciate/collateral ligament sprain (n = 70, 45.2%), meniscal tear (n = 21, 13.5%), and cartilage injuries (n = 15, 9.7%). Most of the patients diagnosed with Achilles tendon rupture (n = 2, 100%) and patellar instability (n = 13, 81.3%) were referred to surgery. Orthopedics agreed with the sports medicine physicians’ opinions in most cases (n = 110, 71.0%). Thirty-four patients (30.9%) recommended surgery by the surgeon postponed/refused the treatment for various reasons or had surgery in another hospital.

Conclusion

Most non-emergency sports injuries can be treated conservatively. Young and male patients participating in contact sports are more likely to need surgical treatment. Non-surgeon musculoskeletal health-care providers may consider referring patients to orthopedics considering the data demonstrated in this study. Nevertheless, patient’s motivation to undergo an operation should be considered before referring to orthopedics.

KEYWORDS:

• Sports injuries
• surgical treatment
• referral rates
• injury epidemiology

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s)

Author’s Contribution

ÖSK, ŞŞT, GD, and FK participated in the design of the study; ET collected data in the orthopedic department; ÖSK and ŞŞT collected the data in the sports medicine department; ÖSK performed the statistical analysis; ŞŞT contributed to statistical analysis; ÖSK drafted the manuscript; ŞŞT, GD and FK helped to draft the manuscript; and all authors confirmed and contributed the intellectual content of the final version of manuscript.

Ethical approval

The Local Research Ethics Committee approved the study with GO17/681-38 Decision Number.

Level of evidence

III

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/00913847.2022.2151325

Additional information

Funding

The author(s) reported there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.