Child and Teen Injuries  

Children and teenagers can sustain some of the same injuries as adults like strains, sprains, fractures etc. However they are often managed differently than injuries in adults because of their growing skeleton and soft tissue.

There are also injuries that are specific to children and teenagers due to the fact that they are growing and often that growth happens really quickly in spurts. Growth spurts happen at different ages for different children. Due to this growth older children and teens can be prone to specific overuse injuries where tendons. muscles and bone are growing and stretching and are more vulnerable to injury as they are used over and over again in repetitive activities.

Overuse Injuries  

Where are the symptoms and what does it feel like? 
These symptoms can be felt in many areas of the body the most common being the knee, ankle, heel and elbow. Common injuries include tendon strains and ligament sprains, stress fractures. You might have heard of 2 common tendon overuse injuries called Severs (heel pain) and Osgood Sclatters (pain below the knee). These injuries cause local pain in the area and sometimes there might be swelling or a bump where the tendon inserts into the bone.

 
How did it happen? 
This usually happens from overuse – using the same body part over and over again playing lots of sport, particularly the same type of sport. In growing children and teens the tendons can pull onto what are called growth plates in bones and cause irritation and pain in the area.
 
What is it stopping you from doing? 

The pain can cause children/teens to be uncomfortable playing sport or doing day to day activities. It can also cause children or teens to get worried about the injury as they don’t want to give up their sports or playing with their friends and they try to keep working through it causing more pain. In other cases the worry of the injury causes them to stop doing sport altogether.

 
How can we get you better? 

Sport and activity is good for children and teens physically, psychologically and socially. They may require a short period of rest to get the area to settle down but often they may need to just adapt some of their activities which we can help advise on. We will treat the area, find out the best way to take pressure off the tendons and then work to get the tendon stronger gradually without causing further injury and avoid it happening in the future while they are still growing. With these types of injuries it is important not to keep aggravating the area by playing through the pain due to possible injury to the important growth plate.