The University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, a national leader in the field of sports medicine, soon will be doing for our soldiers what it long has done for athletes.

Officials at Fort Campbell, Ky., home of the 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault), are opening today an Injury Prevention and Performance Enhancement laboratory, the first of its kind in the U.S. military.

	The facility at Fort Campbell uses monitors to track the types of motion soliders make during a typical day. Click photo for larger image.

The lab, housed in a converted gymnasium on base, is a clone of the Neuromuscular Research Laboratory in UPMC's Center for Sports Medicine on the South Side, and is to be staffed by researchers from the NMRL.

The UPMC team is headed by Dr. Scott Lephart, chairman of Pitt's department of sports medicine and nutrition and director of NMRL.

Dr. Lephart hopes UPMC will have as much success in reducing injuries among soldiers and hastening recovery from injury as it has had with professional athletes.

"Taking a pro football player and cutting half a second off of his 40 [yard] time is insignificant compared to what we are doing with these soldiers," Dr. Lephart said. "If what we can do will make it more likely they will come home safe, it will be the most rewarding thing we can do in our careers."

The military has a big need for the research that will be done at the Fort Campbell lab, which is financed by a $2.75 million grant from the U.S. Department of Defense.

Soldiers in the 101st Airborne go through a grueling two-week Air Assault course, which features intense physical activity and a great deal of rappelling from helicopters. In the typical course, 53 percent of students suffer musculoskeletal injuries.

Musculoskeletal injury is the primary cause of disability in the military, according to a 1999 report by the DOD's Injury Surveillance and Prevention Work Group. It accounts for 33 percent of Department of Veterans Affairs costs and 18 percent of Army hospitalizations.

Among Air Assault soldiers, more of these are shoulder injuries than injuries to the lower extremities, Dr. Lephart said.

The sophisticated diagnostic equipment in the lab will make it possible for the UPMC researchers to model precisely the motions soldiers make when they're running, jumping or rappelling from helicopters.

When the motion studies are complete, the UPMC team will recommend changes in the training regimen of soldiers to reduce the likelihood of injury, and to strengthen the muscles most often injured.

These are often not the muscles laymen think about.

The primary reason most Air Assault soldiers get injured is because the small muscles which strengthen the scapula, or shoulder blade, are too weak, Dr. Lephart said. Specific exercises must be designed to strengthen these muscles, which do not benefit from the military's standard resistance training exercises of pushups and weight lifting.

Soldiers in combat zones do their jobs while wearing helmets and body armor. The weight and bulk of this protective gear throw off the soldier's balance, so physical training routines designed to optimize performance without the gear may not be the most beneficial, he said.

The job of a paratrooper is different from that of an armored cavalry scout, which is different from that of an artilleryman, he noted. So maybe the physical training regimens should be different, too.

"We know we're going to train a triathlete different from a defensive back," Dr. Lephart said. "We don't know that yet for our soldiers."

"Most in the line of command feel that this program will result in a paradigm shift in training," he said.

The recommendations of UPMC researchers also could result in changes to soldiers' equipment. For example, there are six different foot types, Dr. Lephart noted, and foot injuries could be reduced if the boots soldiers wear reflected this, instead of a "one type fits all" approach.

He hopes the UPMC researchers also can have some impact on the dietary habits of soldiers, Dr. Lephart said.

Professional athletes have some nutrition half an hour before a heavy workout, and replenishment immediately after.

"Muscle needs glucose replenishment within 30 minutes," Dr. Lephart said.

Soldiers at Fort Campbell go to morning PT on empty stomachs, he noted. Afterward, many go to the Burger King on base where they fill up on fatty foods that divert to digestion energy that is required for muscle replenishment, and coffee, a diuretic which lessens the value of the water they drink.

"If we can have an effect on changing behavior, we can have a significant effect on how they perform," Dr. Lephart said.