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Sport physicians commissioned for Paralympics study
19 September 2012
Paralympic pioneers: Profs Wayne Derman and Martin Schwellnus are leading a first-of-a-kind study following the Paralympic Games. |
Top sport and exercise medicine physicians Professors Wayne Derman and Martin Schwellnus were commissioned by the International Paralympic Committee (IPC) to conduct pioneering research on injuries and illnesses suffered by athletes at the 2012 Paralympic Games in London.
As part of a collaboration with the University of Brighton in the UK, the University of Calgary in Canada and the University of Utah in the US, Derman and Schwellnus, of the Clinical Sport and Exercise Medicine Research Group at the UCT/Medical Research Council Research Unit for Exercise Science and Sports Medicine (ESSM), monitored each of the 4,500 athletes at the competition using an electronic surveillance and online data-capturing system that they developed for this purpose.
Additional data was harvested before and after the event.
"This is the first of this type of study in the world," said Derman, who also served as the chief medical officer of the South African Paralympic team .
"It's a big feather in our cap under our affiliation as an International Olympic Committee (IOC) research centre," he added, alluding to the accreditation recently conferred on the Clinical Sport and Exercise Medicine Research Group, led by the duo.
Schwellnus explains that the "beauty" and "uniqueness" of the study is that the researchers could track injuries and illness in Paralympians on a daily basis. It was the first time that the latter had been done at the Paralympic or Olympic Games.
"The reason for all of this data collection is really so that we can use this information to plan a variety of different prevention strategies in the future," says Schwellnus. "We really want to reduce injuries and risk of illness. This has never been done for disabled athletes."
The data will be used as a springboard for a longitudinal study to investigate the broader relationship between long-term injuries and illnesses and athletes' particular disabilities.
