Editorial

While sport has value in everyone’s life, it is even more important in the life of a person with a disability. This is because of the rehabilitative infl uence sport can have, on the physical body, and on rehabilitat-ing into society. Nowadays, sports and physical activity found its way in reha-bilitation, and individuals with a disabil-ity participate in high-performance as well as in competitive and recreational sport across the world. The Paralympic Games, originated from sports complementary to physical rehabilitation, are the pinnacle event.1 Paralympic athletes can be categorised in different groups, each requiring a par-ticular approach with regard to medical care: athletes with loss of limb or limb defi ciency (eg, amputation), athletes with loss of muscle power (eg, spinal cord injury, postpoliomyelitis, spina bifi da), athletes with coordination problems (eg, hypertonia, ataxia, or athetosis as clini-cally manifested in, for example, cerebral palsy), athletes with visual impairment and athletes with intellectual impairment. With participation in sport comes an associated risk of injury. Despite the growing awareness and popularity of disability sport, there continues to be a relative paucity to understanding the in-jury patterns and risk factors for injury among these athletes.2 The (advances in) use of assistive propulsion and pro-tective devices, as allowed by the sport technical rules (orthotic or prosthetic de-vices, wheelchairs, throwing chairs, sit-skis, sledges, use of goggles,...) brings an additional component of medical care which should be considered throughout (eg, the infl uence on the stump-socket in-terface on the prosthesis and the body). Also not-so-obvious compensatory fac-tors require further attention. Amputa-tion in the lower leg alters the orienta-tion of the pelvis, in turn altering the orientation of the vertebral column. This may have far-reaching consequences on the functional ability of the athlete, and requires the evaluation of technology in a holistic manner.3 Although Paralympic athletes can ex-perience the same spectrum of medical conditions as athletes without disabili-ties, furthering the understanding through longitudinal and systematic investigation of injuries and illnesses in elite athletes is extremely helpful in this regard.