LT Student Gets Help at New Tennis Medicine Center in Burr Ridge

Talented Lyons Township freshman Alex Chatt won 24 straight games in Sectional play last October to qualify for State, but she never got the chance to play in the tournament, thanks to an injury that caused her to default in the middle of a Sectional semifinal.

“I started feeling a lot of hip pain,” the Western Springs resident remembers. “I could barely walk or rotate my hips during the match.”

Chatt visited an orthopedic surgeon, who told her rest was the only real option for dealing with the problem. She skipped the State tournament, then tried to meet commitments she had to play in junior tournaments later in the fall. But the hip pain returned.

“It kept happening,” recalls her mother, Grazina. “She would be in a tournament and she would get to the semis or finals and she couldn’t finish because the pain just kept coming back.”

There was a time when such an injury might have meant the end of Alex’s competitive tennis career or at least a lengthy hiatus. But Alex, ranked 41st nationally in her age group and No. 1 in the Chicago area, has lofty ambitions.

“I hope to get a scholarship to the University of Michigan,” she explains. “That’s my biggest goal.”

So the Chatts went to visit Dr. Neeru Jayanthi, a board-certified sports medicine physician and also a competitive tennis player.

“It was a breath of fresh air,” Grazina says.

Jayanthi was able to pinpoint Alex’s problem.

“Her pelvis kept shifting because of her growth,” Grazina says. “Her core wasn’t strong enough to hold her pelvis in place because of the intense matches she was playing.”

The doctor prescribed particular exercises to deal with the issue.

“He strengthened her muscles around the pelvis,” Grazina notes. “He actually came out and hit with her to make sure her technique was proper. … Now she’s been free of pain for three or four months.”

Tennis elbow anyone?

Jayanthi is working to help other tennis players resolve their injury problems through the new Tennis Medicine program being offered at the Loyola Center for Health in Burr Ridge. It’s the only one of its kind in the Midwest.

Jayanthi points out that the program is not just for top-flight players like Alex.

“We really enjoy just taking care of anyone who wants to play tennis and doesn’t want to be limited by injury,” he says. “It’s one of the few sports of a lifetime.”

Jayanthi, an associate professor in the departments of Family Medicine and Orthopaedic Surgery and Rehabilitation at Loyola University Chicago Stritch School of Medicine, has extensive expertise in treating tennis-related injuries. He is certified by the United States Professional Tennis Association (USPTA) and has assisted with the medical needs of players at tournaments ranging from high school to the Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP) World Tour.

“While most tennis injuries are not necessarily severe, they can significantly affect performance,” Jayanthi says. “Our goal is to get patients back on the court as soon as possible, and teach them the techniques that will reduce their risk of further injuries and maintain their performance.”

The program is designed to evaluate and treat injuries with a tennis-specific approach, including any needed rehabilitation, injections, or surgery.

“We work very closely with our orthopedic colleagues,” Jayanthi notes, but he says only 5-10 percent of injuries require surgery.

“We see a lot of minor things,” he says, like knee and ankle strains.

There’s also, of course, the famous tennis elbow (tendon degeneration of the wrist/forearm muscles), as well as rotator cuff disorders, lumbar disc disease, meniscus (knee cartilage) tears, and arthritis.

“One I’ve seen a lot in young tennis players is a stress fracture of the lumbar spine,” Jayanthi says.

Shoulder and elbow injuries also are common among younger players, he adds.

Too much of a good thing?

Jayanthi is chairman of the education committee of the International Society for Tennis Medicine and Science. He’s been involved with numerous scientific studies on tennis injuries, including a recent study of injuries among 519 of the top youth players in the Midwest.

Researchers followed the athletes through their summer tournament schedule. They discovered that injuries forcing a player to withdraw from a tournament were more likely to occur among those who played tennis year-round, as opposed to those who were involved in multiple sports.

“They were much more likely to report it if they played only tennis,” observes Jayanthi.

“Every tournament we go to, there’s somebody who has to pull out,” says Grazini Chatt. “I feel the parents’ pain. Here you are in the middle of Georgia somewhere. … It’s heartbreaking.”

The study also found a possible correlation between the amount of time spent training and injuries.

“We’re seeing some suggestion that training more than 16 hours per week may also potentially be a risk factor,” Jayanthi says.

In fact, Jayanthi says young players probably should not train more hours per week than their age. For example, a 12-year-old player should not train more than 12 hours per week.

“We haven’t validated that,” he cautions. “We have some early suggestions that it’s a pretty good number. … I think it’s a reasonable number.”

In the case of Alex Chatt, Jayanthi recommended she cut down on her tournament schedule a little bit.

“I usually play about two a month,” says Chatt, who started playing tennis at the age of nine. "“I started recreationally at a park district.”

Chatt says that with the help of Jayanthi and the Loyola Tennis Medicine program, she hopes to keep playing the sport she loves for a long time to come.