Edward R. Laskowski, M.D., professor of PM&R and co-director of the Mayo Clinic Sports Medicine Center, discusses a comprehensive facility that helps people and athletes perform their best. Sports and life are about movement; the Mayo Clinic Sports Medicine Center has the technology and staff to analyze movement and help people of all ages and abilities achieve their fitness goals.
EDWARD R. LASKOWSKI: So we really have a one stop shop that has all comprehensive services to help you perform your best. Whether you're a soccer mom, a master's athlete, elite professional athlete, or a high school athlete, all the tools and services are here. We want to service all populations. And really, sports is about movement and life is about movement. If we move optimally, usually things go well. We don't have any problems. But if we move suboptimally, and that could be because of a muscle tightness, an imbalance in strength or stability, then we could be predisposed to have a problem. So this facility lets us analyze movement and help you to be the best that you can be. We have specific areas. So if you're an overhead thrower, if you throw a baseball, we have a cage with 60 foot, six inches, the regulation length, so we can observe how you throw a baseball, the mechanics of what you do. Same thing with golf, the same thing with hockey-- we have a video analysis. We have a hockey treadmill here so we can watch you skate and watch you move on the ice, the synthetic ice. Running also-- running is hugely popular. But the way you run can influence your risk of injury. So we have the ability to analyze your gait on the treadmill. All these have 2D video analysis so that then our therapists can break down the components of how you move and how you perform in that task, and we can make corrective interventions to help you to perform your best. Preventing injury is important also. You may be aware of ACL injuries. There's about a six times greater increase in ACL injuries in female athletes. So we have the ability to analyze movement patterns of the female athlete when jumping, when landing from jumping, and take corrective action to help that athlete perform their best and reduce their risk of injury. On site are our physical medicine and rehabilitation physicians, our orthopedic physicians our physical therapists, our athletic trainers, and our strength and conditioning colleagues. So we have everything here that you would need. We also have on-site digital radiography, also brace application and the capability to perform musculoskeletal ultrasound techniques and interventions. Musculoskeletal ultrasound lets us evaluate tissue real time in a non-x-ray way where there's no harmful radiation. It also lets us provide therapeutic injections. In addition to corticosteroid, we also are investigating and using platelet rich plasma and also stem cell therapy from bone marrow aspirin. So those are two cutting edge technologies that we're utilizing but also researching to determine the exact mode of action and exactly the right way to provide these treatments. | love to have our referring providers send us patients so that we can provide the optimal treatment recommendations for them. We love to communicate with the provider. We send each person who comes here a way with a specific prescription of exercise. Exercise really is a medicine. So we give them what they need as far as strength, stability, flexibility, aerobic conditioning, and then have it in a form-- they have information, printed information. They also may have video information if we film them doing a movement task. But then we also provide this information back to the provider so that they can keep track of how their patient is doing. We're open always for communication. We love to hear from our providers. We love to have a provider see this space too. It's a rather unique way of doing things here at Mayo and a lot of unique services are on site here. So we love to have people come visit. You know, it's amazing. People often think of Mayo as maybe last resort when all else has failed. But people walk into this space and they say, wow, I didn't know Mayo was doing this, or wow, I didn't know you guys had all this. So it's really neat to have people come and experience this part of Mayo helping you to be the best you can be as far as fitness and life. We've had so many comments and people saying, boy, I didn't know, doc, that I-- you know, my golf swing. I was hurting because my hip was tied. Or I didn't know, doc, that-- because my shoulder was hurting because my core was not working well and my technique was off. And when we make those interventions, they're able to have an improved quality of life, often get back to activities that will keep them healthy. A lot of people have not been doing activities because they hurt. And if we can get them moving, that's-- our country is still in the midst of an epidemic of obesity and inactivity. So the more we can do to get people moving, the better our whole country will be as well as improving each individual's quality of life.
