The Tribune

DR ALEJANDRO Badia, recognised as one of the top hand surgeons in the United States, will serve as a opening speaker at the American Association for Hand Surgery 2015 Annual Meeting scheduled to be held in Nassau tomorrow morning.

He will be giving a presentation on the latest in “Maximising Economics in a Changing Health Care Environment” and “Sports Injuries of the Hand and Wrist” at Atlantis starting at 7am.

During the meeting, Dr Badia, who is the founder and medical director of Badia Hand to Shoulder Centre in Florida, will be identifying the barriers to navigating through the ever-changing health care environment by presenting a solution of coordinated, convenient, responsive, affordable and expert orthopaedic urgent care, and speak on common athletic injuries of the hand and wrist.

“I’m so pleased to be in beautiful Bahamas,” he said. “My mission has been and always is to create educational synergy and to expose great technology that allows minimally invasive procedure accelerates recovery, prevents some surgical procedures, and shortens post-surgical rehabilitation. This system provides our patients, mostly athletes who depend so much on their physical excellence, with better healthcare and better recovery methods and options.”

Dr Badia has successfully performed surgery on many professional athletes from around the world, including on high-level tennis, polo, golf, NFL and NBA players.

“Major fractures of the hand or wrist occur only during high-speed contact or in older athletes who may have osteoporosis,” he said. “Complex fractures below the elbow can occur and there is a great variation in the fracture patterns. It is important that an upper extremity specialist evaluate these injuries, as recovery of full wrist and hand range of motion is often difficult. Fractures of the upper arm (humerus) may also result from this injury and can even extend into the shoulder joint.”

Traumatic (acute) refers to any specific, sharp pain that is of rapid onset or pain that results from a specific traumatic incident such as an athletic injury. Traumatic injuries are more commonly seen in athletes who participate in certain sports that require a higher level of contact (football, hockey or wrestling). The most common traumatic fracture injury in the athletic population is found in the fingers and include joint dislocations, sprains, muscle strains, broken bones, tendon inflammation and ligament.

Overuse (chronic) injuries are more likely to occur in athletes who engage in sports that require them to repeat a particular movement (baseball, soccer, tennis or golf). Overuse injuries are likely to be stress induced and include tendon inflammation and dislocation, nerve injury, and overuse stress fractures. Chronic injuries have a higher tendency to develop long-term effects. However, long-term disability is less likely to occur from overuse injuries than from traumatic injuries. An athlete’s performance may significantly diminish, if the chronic injuries are left untreated. Surgery may be required if the overuse chronic injuries persists and continues to develop over time.

“Arthroscopy for hand and wrist pathology is a minimally invasive surgical technique used to explore a joint from within. Tiny incisions are used to insert a fibreoptic instrument which serves as a camera to the inside of a joint and allows to not only diagnose a problem but often times concludes what definitive treatment should would be best for the patient. This is opposed to the more standard technique of open joint surgery, which can result in increased scarring and prolonged recovery time,” said Dr Badia.

Dr Badia was nominated in 2012 as “one of the top 45 great hand and upper extremity surgeons” by Becker’s Orthopaedic & Spine Review. He is also in conversations with leading Brazilian medical authorities to organise a sports medicine conference prior to the 2016 Olympic games in Rio de Janeiro.