Pre-participation Sports Assessment

Abstract

The paper by Goldberg et al (Pediatrics 66:736, 1980) is of interest to the primary care physician in documenting not only what may be one approach to the often demanding and frustrating problem of large numbers of pre-participation health examinations, but most particularly in reporting what is found in a large number of such examinations when performed on high school boy and girl athletes. The physician may not appreciate that there are as many as 7 million high school students involved in interscholastic sports programs each year; potentially all are candidates for this type of health evaluation. If the pre-participation sports examination is to be effective and economically realistic, its goals must be precisely defined.