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Interviewer: So what exactly are growing pains, and are they normal? I'm here with Dr. Julia Rawlings, a non-operative sports medicine physician at University of Utah Health. And I just want to start out by asking what exactly are growing pains? Is it the legs actually growing? Or what causes these pains in kids?

Dr. Rawlings: Yeah, so the name growing pains is a little bit misleading. Children are growing, but that is not causing pain. There's no evidence that growth itself causes pain. What we think is actually happening is that when a child is just very active during the day, the muscles get a little tired and achy. And we'll see that kids get this achy, throbbing muscle pain that usually happens later in the afternoon or evening, or it can even wake the child up at night.

Interviewer: Geez. So it doesn't have anything to do with bones getting longer, muscles getting stretched. It's just them being active kids?

Dr. Rawlings: That's what we believe, yes.

Interviewer: When do kids usually start experiencing growing pains, if they do?

Dr. Rawlings: So there are two peaks that we typically see growing pains. It's usually the preschool age group, and then the preteen, so kind of 11, 12, maybe early teen, 13.

Interviewer: And it's normal, right? There's nothing . . .

Dr. Rawlings: Completely normal. It doesn't affect growth.

Interviewer: It's just a little uncomfortable?

Dr. Rawlings: Or quite uncomfortable. It can be pretty painful, yeah.

Interviewer: And let's say a kid is experiencing some severe pain in their legs, it's maybe keeping them up at night, etc. What are some ways that maybe you could treat it at home to give them a little bit of relief?

Dr. Rawlings: Yeah, so I think starting with just some massage, rubbing their legs is helpful. You can try a heating pad, or if they prefer it, you can even try ice. Sometimes just a dose of ibuprofen or Tylenol can be very helpful. And if they have this pain that comes up pretty frequently, you might even see if they'll be willing to stretch a little bit during the day and see if that helps at night.

Interviewer: Just running stretches, yoga stuff?

Dr. Rawlings: Yeah, yoga for kids, that's perfect.

Interviewer: Oh, fantastic.

Dr. Rawlings: Yeah, just some hamstring stretches probably is a good place to start.

Interviewer: Sure. And say a parent is listening right now. When can we expect these growing pains to stop?

Dr. Rawlings: Yeah, hopefully they'll stop after they leave those peak periods, so after they've left the preschool years or they enter their teen years. They can continue throughout the teenage years, but usually not through adulthood, into adulthood.

Interviewer: And until then, you've got stretches, ibuprofen, anything to help.

Interviewer: Now, if your child is complaining of leg pains, could it be growing pains, or is it something more serious?

Dr. Julia Rawlings is a nonoperative sports medicine physician here at University of Utah Health. And let's start with the type of leg pain I think just about every kid, at some point, experiences. One point or another, it seems pretty benign. What exactly is growing pain? What are growing pains, I guess?

Dr. Rawlings: Yeah. So growing pains, the name came kind of early in the 1930s and 1940s when people thought that growth was related to these pains that children get, usually later in the afternoon, evening, or maybe even wakes them up at night. But we know now that it's not related to growth, but it's more likely just related to children being very active during the day. So it's just these pains that come on later in the day or at night, mostly from kind of overuse of muscles.

Interviewer: But it's not like the bones are stretching or anything like that. It's just . . .

Dr. Rawlings: No, it doesn't have anything to do with growing. It does happen in children, but it doesn't affect their growth. It's not directly related to growing.

Interviewer: My understanding is it's pretty normal for kids to be having this and just as part of, like, I guess being active and running around.

Dr. Rawlings: It's very common. And the places where it's most common, usually it happens in the calf, the thigh, or the back of the knee. So those are some of the spots that we look at.

Interviewer: Okay. And it's like an aching or just like . . . I guess, how do we know that it's like that kind of pain?

Dr. Rawlings: Yeah, it's like an aching or a throbbing pain. Sometimes children will grab the back of their legs or grab their thighs or just be more cranky. It's usually at the end of the day. It can wake them up at night though.

Interviewer: And so your child's complaining of pain. I guess, as a parent, if you're worried, you know, what should you be on the lookout for to find out if it's something more than just typical growing pains?

Dr. Rawlings: Yeah. So growing pains usually happen intermittently. So it can happen every night, but that's a little less common. So growing pains typically are intermittent. They're usually in both legs, not necessarily at the same time. And the child usually wakes up in the morning completely fine and running around like there's nothing wrong. Those are all very typical for growing pains.

Interviewer: So say a kid is, you know, maybe continually complaining about leg pain or maybe they're getting it through the day. As a parent, what are some of the signs and symptoms that you should be on the lookout for to kind of let you know this isn't growing pains, it's something more serious?

Dr. Rawlings: Yeah, great question. So if your child is complaining of pain, particularly during the day, if they are complaining of pain in the same leg, if the pain stops them from participating in sports activities or from running with their friends, if they are limping with the pain during the day, or if you see anything else that seems abnormal, so swelling of the leg, redness of the leg, if they're getting fevers with it, all of that is something besides growing pains, and you should be seen for that.

Interviewer: And not to, say, worry parents, you know, prematurely, but what could be going on with their child?

Dr. Rawlings: So it could be something as simple as an overuse injury. Lots of times, in children that play sports, we see overuse injury at the growth plates actually. That's probably one of the more common things. If they're very active, say a teenager running, they could get a stress injury. They could just have tight muscles, and stretching could be helpful. All the way up to the more serious things that are very rare and uncommon, like childhood arthritis or bone cancer.

Interviewer: If your child is, say, showing some of these symptoms, what kind of doctor should you be going to, to, you know, treat the leg? Is it a primary care pediatrician? Is it a sports medicine specialist?

Dr. Rawlings: I think, initially, if your pain is kind of vague and you're not sure what's going on, starting with the pediatrician is a great place. If it's something more serious, like they're not limping, they can't get into the pediatrician, it is reasonable to go to an urgent care or the emergency department, particularly if they won't walk at all. We need to see what's happening. There are . . . sometimes toddlers will have a small fall and twist their leg, and they won't walk, and they'll have a little fracture that you won't even pick up on. And so that's one of the more common reasons we'll see toddlers stop walking, and that's something that can be taken care of either by a pediatrician, a nonoperative sports medicine provider, or in an urgent care emergency medicine setting.

Interviewer: And is there anything, maybe a home remedy, something they could try at home before they, say, take them into a doctor to maybe alleviate any of the pain that they're experiencing?

Dr. Rawlings: Yeah. So if they're experiencing more of these growing pains, kind of intermittent pains in the evening or at night, you can do things like massage the legs, massage the muscles. Warm packs, heating pads are helpful. If it's severe, you can try some acetaminophen, Tylenol, or ibuprofen. And sometimes if it's pretty frequent, you can have them do some stretching during the day and see if that helps as well.

Interviewer: How to handle a knee injury. Dr. Julia Rawlings practices primary care sports medicine and also pediatric emergency medicine, and she is one of the physicians that you would find at the walk-in orthopedic clinic at University of Utah Health. I wanted to talk about knee injuries and young athletes actually. What are some common ways that young athletes can injure their knees? What specific sports or activities do you see?

Dr. Rawlings: Yeah. So it's really common to have a knee injury when you're playing sports, particularly contact sports. But severe injuries, including the ACL, don't always have to be from contact. So we typically see knee injuries that are acute, meaning they happen from a trauma, when you're doing an activity where there's either contact or you change directions quickly, so you're pivoting, you're shifting, you're changing your weight, and the knee can kind of buckle on you and get injured. In people that do more endurance-type sports, like cross country runners, we tend to see more chronic knee pain just from overuse.

Interviewer: Got you. So you kind of covered some of the common injuries to the knee. What could be handled at home without a clinic visit? And then we'll get to when you should perhaps consider coming in.

Dr. Rawlings: Yeah. So starting with an acute injury, meaning that's something you were out doing your sport, you were doing something, and all of a sudden you felt the knee pop, or you twisted it, or something happened. A couple of clues that I would give to go ahead and come in to be seen is, one, if you're having a hard time walking on your leg, then we would really like you to be seen sooner rather than later. We'd like to get X-rays and make sure there's nothing that's broken and then do a good examine and check out the ligaments and the meniscus of the knee.

Another clue is if your knee gets pretty swollen, then that means that there's something significant going on in your knee that should be seen sooner rather than later. Two more other clues, things that I like to ask people about and look for. If your knee feels like it's buckling under you, it's giving out when you walk, then there's the potential that every time it buckles, that we're doing more damage. And in that case, we'd like to get you on crutches and get you into a knee brace. Or if the knee is getting stuck or locked, meaning you can't bend it or you can't straighten it very well without kind of forcing it, those are all things that we'd want to see you sooner rather than later for.

Interviewer: And then when somebody comes into the clinic with some of those more serious symptoms, as you said, what does the clinic do?

Dr. Rawlings: Yeah. So if you have, say, a big swollen knee and we're worried about bigger injuries to the ACL or to the meniscus, something like that, what we would generally do is start off with X-rays, make sure there's nothing that's broken, and then we would do our exam, get a feel for what we think is going on, and then generally get you set up in a knee brace that's appropriate for the injury you have, plus or minus crutches. And then often, patients with significant injuries we'll get set up for an MRI to check out the soft tissue structures, which we can't see on X-ray, and get a definitive diagnosis. And then depending on what we see on our exam, we'll either get you set up with one of the non-operative sports medicine providers for follow-up or our sports medicine surgeons. My practice myself is I typically just let people know what their MRI shows, and then depending on what they need done, I'll then schedule the appointment with the appropriate follow-up person.

Interviewer: And when people come in, how often would you say that they could just come into the clinic and that's kind of it? It's just going to take a little bit of rest, and they're going to recover from their injury.

Dr. Rawlings: You know, it depends a little bit, I think, on the age demographic. So we do see a fair amount of people that come in with an acute knee injury that have just flared arthritis, and they don't actually have an injury to the ligament or something that we would need to do an MRI or surgery for. And those patients we really treat with physical therapy, maybe a steroid injection, and kind of getting them back to functioning, hopefully, so that we can prolong the longevity of their knee. In those cases, then, yeah, all they need really is just that visit in the orthopedic injury clinic and then a follow-up appointment down the road with a primary care sports medicine person or a sports medicine surgeon.

Interviewer: Are there any final thoughts you would want a listener to know about the clinic, or knee injuries, and how to handle that or take care of it?

Dr. Rawlings: I think definitely when in doubt, especially when it's an injury that's happened within the last day or two, come on in. We'll be happy to take a look at it. And if you're getting a chronic injury from training for a marathon, or in kids, they can often get growth plate injuries, again, if they've happened in the last three months, we're happy to see you in injury clinic for more of a chronic developing problem as well.

Interviewer: When should you consider University of Utah Health's Orthopaedic Injury Clinic over perhaps a visit to the ER or urgent care, or is it something you can handle on your own? That's what we want to find out today.

Dr. Julia Rawlings is a primary care sports medicine and also practices pediatric emergency medicine, but it's that sports medicine doctor that we really want to talk to today. So the first thing I want to find out is what are some of the common orthopedic injuries a person should consider using the Orthopaedic Clinic versus an ER or urgent care?

Dr. Rawlings: The Orthopaedic Injury Clinic is a great place to go if you have an acute injury, meaning that you have had an injury that you've sustained recently. We're actually willing to see people that have had an injury anytime in the last three months, but preferably not something that's chronic and going on. We'd rather you go ahead and make an appointment with a regular physician during regular hours, although it can be at the Orthopaedic Center.

Specifically, things that are good for the Injury Clinic. So we see a lot of injuries from the ski slopes. We see people that have been playing different sports, or running, biking. We see some football injuries. Anything that's kind of acute. Anything that could go to an urgent care can go to the Orthopaedic Injury Clinic if it's a musculoskeletal injury.

A couple of things we don't see at the Injury Clinic. We don't do stitches there. So if you're bleeding and you think you need stitches, an urgent care or the emergency department would be more appropriate. Also, if your bone is pretty crooked, it's probably a better idea to go to the emergency room. We can do some local numbing medicine to set some easy broken bones, fingers, and things like that, but larger fractures would need to be seen in the Emergency Department for sedation.

Interviewer: And what kind of diagnostic tools do you have there that kind of makes you the choice for some of these as opposed to perhaps an emergency room or an urgent care?

Dr. Rawlings: Yeah. So the Injury Clinic is fantastic because we have access to x-ray on-site, and we can see those images back as soon as they are done. And depending on the time of the day, we actually can often get the reads back from a musculoskeletal radiologist within a few hours. Sometimes those reads don't come back until the next day. We don't have the capability to do CT scans at the Injury Clinic. We do have access to scheduling MRIs in the building, but that's not done the same time as the visit.

So one great thing about the Injury Clinic is you get kind of a full package. So you get your x-rays. You could get an MRI set up. We have all of the braces and everything that you would need, crutches, things like that. And then, we can get you set up with a specialist, whether that's a sports medicine surgeon, foot and ankle surgeon, or one of our non-operative primary care sports medicine physicians. We will actually make that appointment for you while you're there for follow-up.

Interviewer: So the clinic, it sounds like a better option than perhaps making an appointment. It can be difficult to get in sometimes with an orthopedic doctor at times. So this clinic, it's primarily walk-in, is that how it works, or do you have to make an appointment?

Dr. Rawlings: It is walk-in. It's a little bit tricky right now with coronavirus going on, but, typically, it is walk-in. They are switching to appointments during this period of time, but that's going to be very temporary. Generally, it is walk-in, first come, first served.

Interviewer: How can a person decide if an injury is something that they can treat at home or they can just try to see if it's going to get better versus coming into the clinic or seeing a professional?

Dr. Rawlings: Yeah. So we're always happy to check anything out if you're not sure. A couple of tips that just come to my mind. One is if you have an injury that's bad enough you can't really walk on it or bear weight on it, that's something that should be seen, probably get an x-ray, make sure you haven't broken a bone. Or if you really can't move your shoulder or can't move your arm in some way. If you twist your ankle, and you're walking on it okay, and it gets a little bit swollen, that's something that you could probably wait on at home and see how you do. But, yeah, if you have a hard time moving a body part, that's a good time to go in.

Interviewer: All right. Are there some injuries that really you do want to have looked at, otherwise it could affect you and your mobility in the future?

Dr. Rawlings: Yeah. So there are definitely, particularly injuries that involve the joints. We often like to get a sooner look at what's going on rather than a later look, just because things can happen down the road that can lead to arthritis if they're not treated early. That being said, a lot of musculoskeletal injuries aren't emergencies. Meaning, even if you get something like a torn ACL, which is considered a pretty big injury in the sports world, if you're diagnosed several days after that happens, in general, that's okay. It's not something that absolutely needs to go to the emergency department or into the Injury Clinic even the same day you have it. You'd really be okay to get yourself a pair of crutches from the garage and come in a couple of days later.

Interviewer: For the particularly injury-prone that might have some crutches?

Dr. Rawlings: Exactly. There are a lot of people with crutches in their garage from siblings, so.

Interviewer: Any final thoughts that you have when it comes to the walk-in Orthopaedic Clinic? It's such a great resource. I was able to utilize it. I had a shoulder injury. I'm not even going to go into how that happened because it was not cool, it was not athletic. But it was great because I could go in, they were able to look at it, make sure that I didn't, you know, do any permanent damage, which I didn't, and then, you know, gave me a reference to go to a physical therapist to do some exercises to rehabilitate it, so.

Dr. Rawlings: I think it's a fantastic clinic. I mean, it's staffed by people that are trained in musculoskeletal medicine, so we have a little bit of an advantage over lots of the urgent cares that are more kind of general medicine, that we treat a lot of musculoskeletal injuries. We can get you set up with physical therapy pretty easily. And one or two days of the week, we actually have a physical therapist with us in-clinic. So if your injury is appropriate for that, we can even get you started on physical therapy the night that you come in. So I think it's a fantastic resource.