Pediatric and Adolescent Knee Injuries: Evaluation, Treatment, and Rehabilitation

It is my extreme privilege to serve as guest editor for this issue of Clinics in Sports Medicine entitled Pediatric and Adolescent Knee Injuries: Evaluation, Treatment, and Rehabilitation. This issue was produced collaboratively from the Pediatric Research in Sports Medicine Society (PRiSM), and I had the honor of serving as president of this society in 2021. PRiSM is a multidisciplinary group of sports medicine clinicians and researchers, including athletic trainers, physical therapists, nurse practitioners, physician assistants/associates, PhDs, radiologists, primary care sports medicine physicians, and orthopedic surgeons. The purpose of PRiSM is to lead interdisciplinary research, education, and advancement in pediatric and adolescent sports medicine. Our society is devoted to improving not only injury diagnosis and treatment but also injury prevention and sports performance optimization. PRiSM was founded in 2012 by our founding board of directors to improve collaboration and education in pediatric and adolescent sports medicine. We strive to foster the growth of an incredibly diverse membership, representative of all aspects of sports medicine. Many pediatric sports injuries, conditions, and such are unique to young athletes and do not occur in other age groups. By combining research across multiple centers and different practitioners, PRiSM members are uniquely positioned to increase the impact of research. We intend to move beyond research-based retrospective case series and expand our ability to conduct prospective research on outcomes, optimal treatment, injury prevention, and so forth. By developing processes and systems to allow sharing of data, we can answer research questions with greater power, confidence, and generalizability. PRiSM’s research endeavors are centered within research interest groups that study 16 different pediatric adolescent sports conditions that cover concussions, overuse injuries, and fractures and ligament/structural injuries in a multidisciplinary team approach. As you will see in the subsequent articles for this issue, the collaborative multidisciplinary teamwork is showcased by our members and research interest groups for this amazing issue of Clinics in Sports Medicine. We hope that you enjoy and learn from the collective knowledge of our collaborations for the evaluation, treatment, and rehabilitation of pediatric and adolescent knee injuries and pathologic conditions. If you have like-minded interest in the treatment or research of pediatric and adolescent athletes and their injuries, please check out our Web site (prismsports.org) and consider membership! Thanks again.