Common Sports Injuries Treated at CHLMD
Sports injuries affect every tissue in the musculoskeletal system — muscle, tendon, ligament, bone, cartilage, bursa, and nerve. Effective management requires an accurate tissue-specific diagnosis combined with an understanding of the athlete's sport, training load, and return-to-participation goals.
- Muscle strains — hamstring, quadriceps, calf, and groin tears from acute overload or eccentric loading
- Ligament sprains — ankle sprains (the most common sports injury), knee MCL and LCL injuries, AC joint sprains
- Tendinopathy — patellar, Achilles, rotator cuff, and elbow tendinopathy from repetitive overload
- Stress fractures — overuse bone injury, particularly in the tibia, metatarsals, and spine
- Bursitis — prepatellar, retrocalcaneal, and trochanteric bursitis from repetitive friction
- Cartilage injuries — chondral defects and meniscal tears in the knee, labral tears in the hip and shoulder
- Concussion and TBI — contact sport head injuries managed with graded return-to-sport protocols
- Overuse syndromes — IT band syndrome, shin splints, plantar fasciitis, and medial tibial stress syndrome
Physician-Led Sports Medicine at CHLMD
What distinguishes sports medicine at CHLMD is physician leadership throughout the rehabilitation process. Dr. Lichtblau evaluates the injury, orders and interprets imaging, performs diagnostic and therapeutic procedures, prescribes the rehabilitation program, and makes the return-to-sport clearance decision. This integrated approach eliminates gaps between diagnosis, treatment, and rehabilitation — and ensures that every clinical decision is informed by the full picture of the athlete's health and goals.
Injection therapy plays an important role in sports injury management: corticosteroid injections for bursitis and inflammatory tendinopathy, trigger point injections for post-injury myofascial pain, and intra-articular injections for articular cartilage lesions and joint effusions. Injections are coordinated with rehabilitation timing to maximize their benefit and minimize recovery disruption.
Return-to-Sport Protocol
Safe return to sport requires more than pain resolution — it requires restoration of sport-specific strength, neuromuscular control, movement quality, and physiological conditioning. Dr. Lichtblau uses a structured, criterion-based return-to-sport progression: pain-free range of motion → strength symmetry → functional movement quality → sport-specific conditioning → graduated sport reintroduction → full clearance.
Each transition is gated by objective functional criteria rather than arbitrary time points, ensuring that athletes return when they are physiologically ready — not simply when a certain number of weeks have passed. This approach dramatically reduces re-injury risk.
Injury Prevention and Athletic Longevity
After successful return to sport, Dr. Lichtblau provides guidance on training load management, biomechanical risk factors, and sport-specific injury prevention exercise to reduce the risk of recurrence. Athletes who address the underlying deficits that contributed to their injury — movement pattern faults, muscle imbalances, training errors — have substantially better long-term outcomes than those who simply return and resume prior habits.
