Does Your Child Play Sports? Are They Using Pain and Inflammation Drugs?
The paper, Prevalence, frequency, adverse events, and reasons for analgesic use in youth athletes: A systematic review and meta-analysis of 44,381 athletes, is a necessary read for youth sports parents.
Here is a summary:
Practical implications
Of the identified analgesics, NSAIDs appeared to be the most used type of analgesic. Across studies, 7–50 % of athletes reported weekly use. Adverse effects were reported by 3 % to 19 % of athletes. Reasons for using analgesics included treatment of sports-related pain or injury and associated symptoms, to treat illness, and to enhance performance.
Based on the evidence of common use of NSAIDs in youth athletes, clinicians may carefully assess their recommendation of NSAIDs use and adhere to consensus-based strategies for pain management in athletes
Due to the common use of over-the-counter analgesics, poor awareness of benefits and harms, and perceived pressure to use analgesics, youth athletes may be educated about safe analgesic use and proper pain management strategies.
Sports medicine clinicians must trade off the benefits, risks, burden and costs associated with analgesic management strategies, and in doing so, consider the athletes preferences and the tension between masking pain and understanding the protective role of pain in the presence of injury
"Reasons for using analgesics included treatment of sports-related pain and injury and associated symptoms, to treat illness, to enhance performance, and to prevent or block pain to enable participation in sport. The latter is in contrast to guidelines and recommendations for analgesic pain management in athletes stating that analgesics should not be used for pain prevention.3,34 In this context, a main concern is that delayed reporting of pain and injury and removal from athletic activity due to analgesic use may negatively impact injury risk and the severity of existing injuries, thereby possibly leading to lifelong disability, persistent pain, and continued use of analgesics.14,15,36 As athletes from an early age may be introduced and socialized into the sport ethic culture of playing through pain,43,44 this finding may partly be explained by mediated cultural influences in sports communities including pain normalization, risk glorification, and external pressures, leading athletes to engage in risky behaviour by ignoring and covering signs of fatigue, pain, and injury."
Parents - if your athlete is in pain, then find out why!!!!!
