Secondary Injuries

When one injury leads to another.

It may often seem that an injury to a specific part of the body such as the ankle, knee or hip, affects nothing more than the injured site. But a localized injury could result in problems that affect another part of the body even months later. A bad knee, for example, could throw off your biomechanics in such a way that you could develop a bad back - a secondary injury.

Researchers define secondary injury as one that causes the sufferer to take three or more days off from regular exercise and occurs within one year of a previous injury A secondary injury often might not be recognized as such because of the amount of time elapsed since the previous, seemingly unrelated, injury.

Pain resulting from a sprained ankle, for example, may go away after three or four months, but this does not mean that the ankle has been fully rehabilitated. If complete strength is not restored to the injured joint, a biomechanical habit of favoring it may develop. Even one year later, knee pain may set in.

The problem is, how do you tell when you have recovered from an injury? It may take six weeks for a leg broken in a skiing accident to heal, but it may take six months to completely regain the strength in the muscles that atrophied while the leg was in a cast.

Unless you are under the supervision of a qualified physical therapist with access to sophisticated testing machines, you may not be aware of lingering weakness in the injured limb. This may not be relevant until you return to the slopes and incur another injury, such as a torn-up knee, because of the weakened leg.

Who's at Risk?

One way to head off a secondary injury is to he aware of the risk factors. The most important one to look for is an injury that has occurred in the last 12 months, whether or not it's related to your primary sport. A whiplash injury in a car accident can put you at greater risk for injury in an aerobics class, for example. When strength, flexibility and biomechanics are out of balance, you are three to four times more likely to be injured again.

What else can predict a secondary injury?

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Foreword: Billie Jean King

Comments by Barb Harris
Editor in Chief,
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