Football medicine strategies for joint and ligament injuries-ENG

Injuries to joints and ligaments can often occur during sporting activity, with a significant incidence in football.
The book contains abstracts of contributions by speakers invited at the XXIII International Conference on Sports Rehabilitation and Traumatology (Milan, March 2014).
The conference features contributions by the most important experts on issues concerning the subject: diagnosis, treatment, prevention, rehabilitation of football players, with a particular attention to joint and ligament injuries.

Football coaches and fitness staff have to deal with players being involved in up to 70 matches and over 200 training sessions per year. As a direct consequence, the football medicin community is regularly confronted with joint and ligament injuries to football players. The risk of overload is constant and the need for a comprehensive injury prevention programm is imperative.


In 1994 the FIFA Medical Committee established the FIFA-Medical Assessment and Research Centre (F-MARC), to protect the health of all players and promote football as a healty leisure activity. In the proceeding twenty years, F-Marc has developed many research projects, including the prevention programme ‘The 11+’ and the initiative Football for Health, which is formed of 11 simple health messages presented to children during school time, whilst playing football.
In dealing with joint and ligament injuries it is essential that all stakeholders are involved in the conversation; including discussion over their prevention, diagnosis, treatment, and rehabilitation.


However the attention of the Football Medicine Community is nowadays focused on the final part of the process, aimed to attain a complete functional recovery of the injured player.
The conference is, above all, an opportunity for discussion and represent an opportunity for the exchange of ideas and experience. Therefore in this book, in addition to the abstracts the invited speakers sent to us before the conference, we have inserted all the abstracts that were accepted for free oral and poster presentations.
As has appened in the past edition of the International Conference on Sports Rehabilitation and Traumatology, we are sure that this volume will be able to feed the debate on the Football Medicine Strategies for joint and ligament injuries, and we thank all the authors who contributed to realise this book.