Treating Sports Injuries: Par... Video Transcript

Webcast Transcript

Most strains of a muscle refer to a partial tear of a muscle. Muscle by definition has a better blood supply and healing ability than a nonvascular tissue or less vascular tissue like a ligament.

So in general, I guess to answer that question you would have to say that a muscle has more ability to heal, therefore, a strain is more easily healed. But you could have a sprain that gets better much more quickly than a very significant muscle strain, like a bad hamstring or Achilles or calf strain. Sometimes they take a long time, as I'm sure Jim could attest to in getting somebody back to a sport.

DAVID FOLK THOMAS: Just very quickly, tendonitis also. You hear a lot about that. What's the difference between tendonitis?

JIM RAMSAY: Muscle strains and sprains are more what we call an acute injury. Basically, it's an injury that occurs right away. There is definitely a trauma that has damaged that muscle.

DAVID FOLK THOMAS: You know how you did it. You're like, "I just sprained my ankle."

JIM RAMSAY: Exactly. Whereas tendonitis comes on more gradually. It's an overuse type of injury. There is some inflammation. Jonathan might be able to give you more of a structured definition, but there is definitely an inflammation of a tendinous part of a muscle. That comes from microtrauma, small little traumas that occur at the area where it inserts on the bone or some point along the tendon. Over time, those traumas just accumulate and cause a chronic inflammation of that tendon.

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