Boston University

25/07/2024 | News release | Distributed by Public on 26/07/2024 09:48

BU Radiologist Heads to the Paris Summer Olympics

BU Radiologist Heads to the Paris Summer Olympics

Ali Guermazi will join team of physicians treating injured athletes

Ali Guermazi (right), a professor of radiology and medicine at Boston University's Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine, will be part of a team of radiologists helping to treat injured athletes at the Paris 2024 Summer Olympics. He previously served at the Rio de Janeiro 2016 Summer Olympics. In the photo above, he is with Juan Manuel Alonso, chief medical officer for the 2016 games. Photo courtesy of Ali Guermazi

Olympics

BU Radiologist Heads to the Paris Summer Olympics

Ali Guermazi will join team of physicians treating injured athletes

July 25, 2024
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As a basketball and tennis player of admittedly limited skills, Ali Guermazi would never be heading to Paris for the 2024 Summer Olympics as an athlete. But the radiologist will be attending the games as part of a medical team assembled to treat injured athletes. The Paris 2024 Organising Committee for the Olympic and Paralympic Games recently named Guermazi, a professor of radiology and medicine at BU's Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine, as codirector of radiology research for the summer games. This is his second Olympics gig: He previously worked at the Rio de Janeiro 2016 Summer Olympics.

Guermazi will join 32 radiologists and 36 radiographers, including Michel Crema, an adjunct assistant professor of radiology at the medical school. For five days, he will be working as a clinician, reading X-rays, ultrasound, and magnetic resonance imaging for athletes injured during the games. For the rest of the Olympics, he will be directing the collection of injury data with the goal of producing research papers that the Olympic committee hopes will provide insight into training and injury prevention and treatment.

"It's all about best practice," says Guermazi of the research. "The goal is to give them [athletes, trainers, and coaches] an idea of why it happened and how to prevent it the next time."

Guermazi, chief of radiology at the VA Boston Healthcare System, in his office at the West Roxbury VA Medical Center. The framed soccer jersey behind him was signed by Jorge Burruchaga, who scored the winning goal for Argentina in the 1986 World Cup final. Photo by Jake Mackey

One of the papers from the 2016 Olympics detailed the damage to muscles, connective tissue, and bone wrought by competition at the highest level, with more than 1,100 injuries diagnosed for 11,274 athletes. BMX cycling with 38 percent of the athletes injured, and boxing with 30 percent, topped the list.

"Thirty percent of the athletes who participated in the Rio de Janeiro Olympics had arthritis and they were very young. Those were probably post-traumatic [injuries]," Guermazi notes.

As chief of radiology at the VA Boston Healthcare System, he sees some similarities between military veterans and athletes.

"Almost every veteran has post-traumatic osteoarthritis because they went to war…and they do things that are very stressful on the joints," Guermazi says. "We're looking for treatment because at this point there is no treatment."

When injuries occur, the impact of a correct diagnosis and treatment of an injury plays out in real time in the medical clinic. Not only are muscles and bones torn and shattered, but so are Olympic dreams. Whether the athlete enters the clinic accompanied by a coach or trainer, or with an entourage of a dozen people-as happens with big-name Olympic stars-the images reveal the toll of the pursuit of excellence.

"We can say to the athletes how long it's probably going to take for them to return; if it's five or six days, and they can continue [competition], or if their Olympics are over," says Guermazi, who has been in sports medicine for 30 years. The 2015 book he coedited and helped author, Imaging in Sports-Specific Musculoskeletal Injuries, factored into him being invited to the 2016 Olympics.

These high-performing athletes are not typical people, Guermazi notes, adding that their injuries are often way beyond what he sees in his sports medicine practice.

When they finally get to the Olympics, after years of training, the drive to win is often stronger than the fear of injury.

"They want to win. For them, it has to be first, not second or third," he says. "When they get injured, it's really big…. You see the images and sometimes you say, 'Oh my god, what's this?' It's kind of mind-blowing."

Guermazi is impressed by the athletes' resilience, their ability to endure pain, even risk long-term disability, to succeed. He gave the example of a champion judo athlete, who has almost no rotator cuff on one arm. The rotator cuff holds the shoulder joint in place and allows movement of the arm and shoulder. That would seem essential in a sport like judo, but the athlete continued to compete and win despite what should have been a career-ending condition.

According to Guermazi, preventing osteoarthritis in athletes and in the general public is a tough task, but it's important to have the least amount of trauma and microtrauma.

"Exhausting your body is not going to be okay," he says.

NBA players, for example, who play 82 games over a seven-month schedule-roughly a game every two-and-a-half days-have little time for recovery.

"That's really too much for the body," Guermazi says. "I can assure you, there is no NBA player who has a normal body."

These harsh realities have only deepened his appreciation for sports and for the athletes.

"You and I go to work-we sit, we relax, we do our work. But they are working really hard, getting up at six in the morning, training all day long," he says. "Sometimes it's raining or snowing, sometimes they love it, sometimes they hate it…but they have to do it. There is no stop for them."

The payoff can be that moment of global triumph and acclaim. Guermazi especially admires the sprinters, whose years of training leads to just seconds of competition with a margin of victory measured in milliseconds. The true picture of their greatness, he says, lies in the slow-motion replay.

"You see all the muscles, one after the other, going up and down…every single motion is calculated, measured to the millimeter," he says. "It's incredible."

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  • Doug Fraser

    Doug Fraser is a School of Medicine public relations associate; he can be reached at [email protected]. Profile

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