Sport | Rugby
Sevens medics treat record number of injuries
Medics working overtime at the Dubai Rugby Sevens treated a record 1,370 injuries over three days last week.
- By Sarah Tregoning, Staff Reporter
- Published: 23:31 May 3, 2009
Dubai: Medics working overtime at the Dubai Rugby Sevens treated a record 1,370 injuries over three days last week.
And chief Sevens medic, Dr George John, from the Welcare Medical Centre in Dubai has started working with rugby players to devise training plans that will minimise the risk of injury.
By far the most frequent injury experienced by the sevens gladiators this year were hamstring tears and strains.
"The hamstring is the muscle that is used for all the running and tackling and no matter what they do on the rugby field they use the hamstring," said Dr John. "When the muscle tears it swells up and must be iced and rested and we have to tell the player that he will miss the rest of the tournament." Dr John and his team have served at the Dubai Sevens for eight years and while he is glad to be needed, he sincerely hopes that the injury toll will not be increasing year on year. The medics were worked off their feet during the event this year, treating emergencies ranging from dehydration and dislocations to serious spinal injuries and concussion.
"We have been working on the previous year's injury patterns and the training programmes of the teams participating and looking at the prevalence of injuries in various teams," said Dr John.
"We are recommending the type of training they should go through in the next year so that hopefully we might see less injuries by 2006.
"We also identified a few areas in which we may have to provide more medical facilities, which will be taken care before the 2006 event.
"Overall I feel we were able to provide a fantastic medical service, which was complimented by many players, national and international medical teams and also by the organisers Promoseven and the IRB which is worth cherishing."
Players used to colder climates suffered in the Dubai heat and Dr John said that a number of participants had to be linked up to IV drip to rehydrate.
"We had 63 hamstring injuries, 16 dislocations and 50 chest, neck and abdominal injuries. Most of these took the form of rib damage, but there were six major spinal injuries where the patient was immobilised and taken to hospital. Rugby is a very rough game."
But it was not all blood and gore for Dr John. Over the years he has treated a number of famous rugby players and says his favourite team is Fiji.
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