After Kevin’s horrific leg injury, everyone is asking: will he ever play basketball again? Dr. Glashow, co-chief of sports medicine at Mount Sinai Medical Center, tells HollywoodLife.com exclusively if Kevin will ever be back on the court. Read on for details!

After Louisville sophomore Kevin Ware broke his right leg during a game against Duke University, the basketball player was rushed to the hospital and underwent emergency surgery. After a successful surgery, Kevin is now focused on healing, but what does the future for his career hold?

Kevin Ware’s Basketball Career: Will He Ever Play Again?

Dr. Glashow, the co-chief of sports medicine at Mount Sinai Medical Center, tells HollywoodLife.com exclusively that not only will Kevin play basketball again, but he could be healed in time for next season!

“I think this will take about six months to recover, and he could be back on the court that quick,” Dr. Glashow explains. “The rod may or may not be removed from his leg. They will probably keep it in for a year.”

Dr. Glashow also adds that Kevin’s game may be totally unaffected by the injury! “It is very possible that he will play at the same level that he has been at. A complete knee surgery would have been much more damaging and long lasting. So, even though he had a very gory injury, it is better in the long run.”

Louisville Basketball Player’s Recovery

Although Kevin will be able to play basketball again, he has a long road to recovery ahead of him before he’ll be back on the court. After he’s recovered from surgery, Kevin’s next step will be physical therapy, according to Dr. Glashow.

“He will probably be in immediate physical therapy to move his ankle and knee,” Dr. Glashow says. “In this new picture he will be putting a little weight on it. And he is very lucky the fracture is not at a joint, that would be much more problematic and this is a clean break.”

Original article: http://bit.ly/14GDYWO

Related video: Kevin Ware Breaks Leg – Injury May Heal In Six Months? – YouTube
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Jason Richardson will be out perhaps almost a full year recovering from what he says is a cartilage tear the size of a quarter in his left knee.

“It’s pretty tough news to hear,” Richardson, 32, said earlier today following the 76ers practice this afternoon at Philadelphia College of Medicine.  “I’ve been to four different doctors and they pretty much all said the same thing.”

Richardson, who has never missed extensive time before in his 12-year career, sought three different opinions from outside doctors before deciding to have the surgery. All of the doctors who examined his left knee suggested he have the surgery.

“I have a hole the size of a quarter in my cartilage,” Richardson said. “They told me that there is the possibility that if I don’t do something about it eventually it will be bone on bone. I have a life after basketball and I have kids. So I’m going to take care of it.”

Richardson said he plans to have the surgery done next week in New York by Dr. Jonathan Glashow. Glashow was one of the examining physicians.

Richardson is making $5.8 million this season and is schedule to make $6.2 million next season, the last year on his contract.  Richardson has said that he wants to play beyond his current contract.

The Sixers acquired Richardson this past summer from Orlando as part of the four-team, 12-player deal that also brought Andrew Bynum to Philadelphia. Bynum, recovering from bilateral bone bruises (knee) has yet to play a game for the team. He hopes to make his debut with the team after the All-Star break later this month.

Richardson appeared in just 33 games this season. He has missed the last eight games due to chronic pain in his left knee. In the 33 games he appeared in Richardson averaged 10.5 points and shot 40.2 percent from the field.  In 11 seasons in the NBA, Richardson has averaged 17.3 points on 44.0 percent shooting.

Original article: http://bit.ly/157nfKZ

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As soon as Bertrand Berry saw the replay of Ray Lewis’s final tackle last Sunday — made with Lewis’s left arm, as his right hung at his side — he knew exactly what was wrong.

“When he did it, I said, ‘Oh, no,’ ” Berry, a former Arizona Cardinals defensive end, said in a telephone interview this week. “I could tell the way he was holding his arm; it was a very awkward angle he was holding it. Your lower arm, from the forearm down, you can’t make it go where you want it to go. Your arm is just flailing around.”

Berry knew from experience. He, like Lewis, the Ravens linebacker, had torn his triceps — Berry did it in both arms, almost exactly a year apart. The injury is very rare in the general population and even among most athletes, but it is a bit more commonplace among those whose job it is to shove very large people out of the way.

Denver defensive lineman Ty Warren has missed most of the last two seasons with two separate triceps tears. A teammate, defensive lineman Jason Hunter, tore his triceps during the preseason, as did Arizona offensive tackle Levi Brown and Tennessee center Eugene Amano. The now-retired center Kevin Mawae’s streak of 177 starts was ended in 2005 by a torn triceps.

Still, sports medicine specialists who have performed thousands of operations to fix the ubiquitous anterior cruciate ligament tears in professional athletes and in weekend warriors can count on two hands the number of triceps they have stitched up. The injury usually happens when a person is trying to push someone or something away and there is a sharp force to the bend of the elbow. In Mawae’s case, the mammoth Buffalo defensive lineman Sam Adams fell on his elbow. Tony Danza, the actor, tore his triceps when he fell while rollerblading with video camera in hand through “The Gates,” Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s art installation in Central Park in 2005. Older people occasionally tear them when they fall.

Warren wondered if the wear and tear of playing a two-gap defense in New England, where he was on the field for many snaps during games, contributed to his injuries. Berry speculated that dehydration and perhaps diminished testosterone levels caused by grueling practices contributed to an injury that he called trendy among linemen. Doctors say steroid use and repeated cortisone injections in the elbow may weaken the tendons.

While the biceps muscle is responsible for bending the elbow, the triceps muscle’s main job is to extend to make the elbow straight. The tendon attaches at the tip of the elbow, and the force of a collision or a fall causes the tendon to tear off the bone. The back of the arm usually swells, and the arm gets weak. Sometimes doctors and trainers can feel through the skin the void created where the tendon has detached from the bone. Even for the strongest, most well-conditioned athletes like Lewis, it is difficult to extend the arm against the slightest resistance.

“Biceps tear much more frequently,” said Jonathan Glashow, an orthopedic surgeon and the co-chairman of sports medicine at New York’s Mount Sinai Medical Center. “This is a flat, broad tendon — the force is spread over a bigger area. You don’t do abrupt things with your elbow unless you’re pushing someone or you fall on it.”

Once the triceps tears, it is hard to miss. Berry recalled that he heard his triceps snap both times. Warren lost strength in his arms in the middle of the plays on which he was injured. The area around the elbow felt as if it were burning, as if someone were rubbing an eraser on the skin over and over.

On the field, the impact is immediate — players can no longer push off — but it is in life’s mundane tasks that the triceps is most appreciated. Reaching up to change a light bulb or to put something on a shelf would be difficult with a torn triceps. It is nearly impossible to push up out of a chair, a reason surgery is almost always recommended in older patients. Warren had to push his chair back from a table whenever he had to write because he could not bend his arm the way he wanted to. Danza was said to have joked that he could not pick his nose.

“Signing a check? Good luck,” the right-handed Berry said of tearing his right triceps. “Brushing your teeth. You don’t think of the little things you do.”

The metal brace Berry had to wear after surgery made getting through airport security difficult. Driving was no better. The brace was so heavy that his arm ached from having to be held high enough to steer. It was so annoying that when Berry ripped his left triceps a year later, he was grateful that it, at least, was not his right one again.

The Ravens said that Lewis’s tear was complete. Surgery is a must in those cases; sometimes nonathletes can try to rehabilitate partial tears without surgery. The good news is that the surgery is fairly straightforward.

According to Gautam Yagnik, the chief of orthopedic surgery at West Kendall Baptist Hospital in Miami-Dade County, Fla., and a specialist in sports medicine, an incision is made in the back of the arm. Holes are usually drilled in the bone at the end of the elbow and, after the end of the torn tendon is identified, sutures are sewed through it. Then doctors sew the torn tendon back down to the bone. There are no fancy screws, and very rarely is a cadaver tendon needed when surgery is performed soon after the injury.

The bad news?

“Of the ones that were repaired, they generally missed a whole season to come back, but most were able to come back and play,” Yagnik said. “It’s not necessarily a career-ending injury, though.”

Lewis had surgery Wednesday, and the Ravens put him on injured reserve with the designation that he could return this season. That seems like wishful thinking even if the Ravens make the Super Bowl because, Glashow said, a tendon is not fully healed for three months. That does not include the time it would take Lewis to regain the normal strength in his arm. Berry and Warren both said it took them about six months. Lewis, 37, has made no announcement about his plans since the injury, but Glashow has one bit of encouragement to offer.

“It’s a lot better to have this,” he said, “than A.C.L.’s.”

Original article: http://nyti.ms/T6Q9kI

Dr. Jonathan Glashow, noted orthopedic surgeon and co-chief of sports medicine at New York’s Mount Sinai Medical Center, has worked with athletes for nearly two decades in private practice, treating many top stars in his specialties—knees and shoulders.

Today he discussed Jeremy Lin‘s meniscus tear and surgery and the prospects for the Knicks‘ guard’s recovery.

Note: Dr. Glashow is not Lin’s physician nor has he examined him, but has extensive experience with meniscus tears like the one in Lin’s left knee.

 

Bleacher Report: What is the most common cause of the torn meniscus that Jeremy Lin suffered? Is it more likely from repetition or a single incident?

Dr. Jonathan Glashow: There are two types of ways—an acute event, where someone tears a ligament or cartilage. This doesn’t sound like the case here.

A chronic tear is something that happens with many small events over time—tiny tears that, pushed forward, hit a threshold and becomes bothersome. With these chronic tears, often we can take a small piece of the meniscus out, not repairing it, though that’s not absolute.

If it is in an area with no blood supply, we take a piece out and it leads to a quicker recovery. If the athlete can play well enough to continue the season, so be it, but sometimes there are complications like arthritis that can cause other issues. But more likely, they are able to recover sooner.

BR: Are there other procedures to speed the healing process?

JG: In some cases, there are orthobiologics like PRP [platelet-rich plasma] that may enhance recovery. Some are responders to these, and others are not. If an athlete is a responder, it’s the ideal thing where timing is of the essence.

BR: Lin went from very sparse use to playing 35 minutes a game. Could that have had an impact on this type of injury?

JG: A normal knee can take this kind of playing time, but an abnormal knee with a slight injury over this workload will come out when you push it. I don’t think playing all this time caused the tear; rather it likely brought out a subtle injury that accelerated the rate.

BR: What is the normal likelihood for recovery? Can he be 100%?

JG: I think so. If it is just the meniscus, these athletes go back 100%. Even with a significant wear change, they go back—the question may be more three, five, seven years down the road: Does he get secondary problems? In next few years, it would be unusual for him not to recover fully.

BR: Is this the type of injury in which a player may favor the knee and be afraid to use it the same way after he returns?

JG: I think part of it is mental, but more of it is seen as a chronic problem, rather than a single incident, once he gets his confidence back, he’ll go just as hard. My guess is, unless he has something else we’re not seeing, meaning arthritis, and he does his rehab, it could be 3-6 weeks or until next season.

BR: What is the normal rehabilitation procedure for this type of injury?

JG: One of the things to make sure is that the athlete doesn’t neglect the other areas while the injured area is healing, to make sure the core of the body doesn’t get out of shape, that he or she doesn’t lose cardiovascular conditioning. Sometimes that can be done on a bike or with upper body work, undergoing the right exercise regimen. The focus can’t just be on the knee, but on the whole body.

BR: There was a news report that perhaps the team knew about the severity of the injury sooner, and held back the information to not affect postseason ticket sales. How likely is this injury to have been diagnosed earlier? Would he have been able to play at all on the knee?

JG: You can’t look at an MRI or a diagnosis of a meniscus injury and know that he’s not going to play. Some play for a while and all of a sudden something throws them over the edge. I have to give the team the benefit of the doubt; it may not have been bothering him, and he could continue to play fine. The analogy I like to use is that of a paper clip. You bend it, it looks fine, but after more bending it finally breaks.

BR: Without naming specific athletes, in general, what percentage of those you have treated with a torn meniscus have returned fully, and how many have never recovered?

JG: I would say high 90s. The reason for not coming back from this would be something else, like arthritis, other complications, not wanting to come back, a hole or dent in the cartilage—that is less predicable. If he has to have an injury requiring surgery, this is one of the better things to have.

 

Jerry Milani is a Featured Columnist for Bleacher Report.