When David Beckham limped off the pitch, thereby ending his chances of appearing at the Football World Cup this summer, sports injuries and rehabilitation techniques were once again front and back page news stories. The global media attention paid to one player's Achilles tendon is a sign of the growing importance of sports rehabilitation as a field of research. Now Paul Comfort and Earle Abramson's pioneering new title 'Sports Rehabilitation and Injury Prevention' provides the first book written exclusively for this growing discipline.
Sports Rehabilitation and Injury Prevention provides a comprehensive, practical, evidence-based guide, covering every stage of the rehabilitation process, from initial assessment, diagnosis and treatment, through to the return to pre-injury fitness and injury prevention.
This comprehensive book, which also includes nutritional and psychological aspects of the rehabilitation process, is an engaging overview of the field, making it ideal for amateur sports enthusiasts and elite athletes alike.
"The past three years have seen the emergence of degree courses devoted to sports rehabilitation and the number is growing," said Co-Editor Earle Abrahmson of Middlesex University. "Currently students, graduate sports rehabilitators and sports therapists have to rely on textbooks within physiotherapy, medicine and physiology. This will be the first book written specifically for them."
Sports Rehabilitation and Injury Prevention is divided into five parts. Parts I, II and III cover screening and assessment; the pathophysiology of sports injuries and healing; and the various stages of training during the rehabilitation process.
Part IV looks at the most common injuries in the most popular sports and explores their treatment through the complete rehabilitation process. It includes real world case studies and sample rehabilitation programmes. Part V gives useful advice on how to set up in practice as a sports rehabilitator including legal, financial and ethical issues.
"With growing numbers of people participating in both competitive and recreational sporting and fitness activities, there has been a significant increase in both major and minor sport related injuries," said Co-Editor Paul Comfort of the University of Salford. "The trained sport rehabilitator or therapist is concerned with the scientific evaluation, diagnosis, treatment and management of injuries as a result of sports and exercise participation, and this is the first time all of these areas are brought together in one book."
Can soda taxes fight obesity? New research adds to the debate