Doha, 06 May 2019

Aspetar, the orthoapedic and sports medicine hospital in Doha concluded three days long conference on medicine and science in athletics was attended along with experts speakers over 250 participants.

Researchers, healthcare professionals, and sports medicine experts from across the globe discussed the latest therapies in athletics injuries treatment. over 70 renowned experts delivered 16 ground- breaking informative sessions and workshops.

Professor Jan Ekstrand, Chief Medical Officer (CMO) at Aspetar, said; “The conference is aimed at bringing the world’s best medical professional together to discuss how they can ensure athletes are kept in good health and that they have the best medical and training support to operate at their optimal performance level. We have experts from around the world representing and discussing the newest research techniques to help athletes from different athletic disciplines stay fit and healthy, both physically and mentally. Well-being of the athletes is also paramount, and so it also formed an important central theme for discussion during the conference.”

Prof. Ekstrand also discussed how he sees a coach as more important than a doctor when it comes to injury prevention in top class football clubs and how this could apply to individual sports such as athletics, since the coach often decides the work-load on an athlete. He went on to say that a coach’s approach and attitude is also important to the mental health and injury prevention of any athlete. The professor also shared findings from a football study which demonstrated how this approach could be applied to track and field athletes.

Another speaker from La Trobe University Sport and Exercise Medicine Research Centre in Australia, Professor Dr. Jill Cook, said; “This conference is a fabulous opportunity to share our knowledge with other experts who specialise in track and field athletics. My presentation was about tendon pathology and how athletes can perform on the world-stage with certain injuries but there has to be collaboration between the athlete, the clinician and the coach for this to happen. It was great to be given a platform to speak about my work with other leading professionals”

Professor of Sport and Exercise Medicine at the Faculty of Health Sciences, University of Pretoria, South Africa, Dr. Martin Schwellnus, also hosted a session and discussed how modern-day, elite athletes now have to frequently travel internationally to compete at events taking from a few days to 1 or 2 weeks and that this kind of travel is associated with an increased risk of health challenges that can affect sports performance.

Dr. Schwellnus also discussed certain strategies and tips that can help reduce the risk of illness/injury during travel, such as; sleep, hydration, nasal protection, food borne bacteria, beware fellow passengers, avoidance of aisle seats, disinfect as much as possible, air vents, and probiotic ingestion.

The conference also highlighted one of the best track-and-field injury studies and one of its key findings that when 80% of a planned training regime is completed athletes are nearly 100% successful with yearly completion goals.

At the conference’s conclusion, Dr. Paul Dijkstra, Director of Medical Education at Aspetar and Chairperson of the Scientific Planning Committee stated that the tremendous success of this conference will encourage us to organize it on an annual basis and will also coincide with the Diamond league- Doha which is scheduled to take place in May of every year.