Keywords:
Musculoskeletal soft tissue, MR, eLearning
Authors:
R. Del Vescovo, F. Giurazza, R. L. Cazzato, R. F. Grasso, M. Gemignani, B. Beomonte Zobel; Rome/IT
DOI:
10.1594/ecr2013/C-1955
Methods and Materials
10 Italian first division soccer players with a known diagnosis of pubalgia associated with a suspected sports hernia presented at our Institution between October 2011 and May 2012 with sharp pain in the right lower quadrant of the abdomen; they previously received a diagnosis of sports hernia.
The pain was localized to the inguinal region,
just medial to the external inguinal ring,
near the insertion of the tendon and insertional region of the right adductor longus.
There was no radiation of the pain into the scrotum or to the opposite groin.
The pain was aggravated by sudden movements such as running,
lateral cutting,
kicking,
shooting a slap shot and other activities that involve torso rotation and abdominal stress during intense physical activity.
Pain was usually absent or minimal at rest.
The athlete had pain getting out of bed in the morning.
The medical staff of their team started conservative treatment involving physiotherapy but no significant improvement resulted.
Each time they interrupted their training the symptoms improved and on average after two weeks they were able to start playing soccer again; however,
after a few training sessions the pain came back again and so they missed several matches running off a discontinuous matches period.
They had no history of trauma nor of muscular injury in that area but he did suffer from chronic pubalgia.
An MRI study of the lower abdomen was performed.
We applied the following sequences: T2 weighted Turbo Spin Echo (TSE) with fat-suppression on non-axial planes and true fast imaging with steady-state precession (True-Fisp) on axial and coronal planes before and after performing the Valsalva maneuver.