ASSESSMENT OF THE PUBALGIC WALKING WITH THE HELP OF PODIATRY PLATFORM AT FOOTBALL PLAYERS
Authors: Ionite Catalin , Rotariu Mariana , Gheorghita Andrei 
Published: February 2023

Nowadays, the popularity of football is undeniable compared to any other sport. With the popularity the amounts invested in this sport and implicitly the physical and mental of the football players also increased, thus becoming a true industry. If during the nineteenth century the players practicing this sport did it as amateurs, part-time, after hours, in the twenty-first century football became a professional sport where practitioners make every effort to achieve the highest performance possible. Thus, nowadays football players have game strategies, physical and psychological preparation, various recovery methods, but especially very intense daily workouts. Once this transition from hobby to professional was produced, new activities such as training camps and friendly matches have been introduced and the number of sports competitions has increased, consequently increasing the training frequency and intensity considerably. All these factors mentioned above led to the overuse of the muscular-arthro-kinetic chain, to the need to shorten the recovery period after the effort and to the need for creating new kinetic angles in the football game, thus favouring the emergence of new pathologies. Thus, pain in the pubic symphysis is a condition that is seen more and more often in this sport. Pain in the pubic symphysis is defined as osteitis pubis and is an inflammation of this joint and of the tendons of the corresponding muscles. In general, the main causes of osteitis pubis are: complications after birth, gynaecological or urological post surgery complications, rheumatologic affections and intense sport activities (mechanical overwork, major trauma or repeated minor trauma). In the case of football players the most common causes can be intense sport activities, rheumatic problems of any kind or urological post surgery complications. If we talked about its causes, now we need to talk about the consequences of osteitis pubis. Thus, the overuse of the joint of the pubic symphysis leads not only to the occurrence of pain, but also to changes in the statics and dynamics of the individual. In order to identify the changes mentioned above we will use Podiatry platform - a device for measuring the characteristics of the walk and posture, the quantified definition of each area: through pressure, weight, the area of the support surface, the visualisation of the pressure centre for each foot, the design of the weight centre, measurement of the medio-lateral index, the Romberg analysis. The proposed study tries to compare the indexes of the healthy football to the ones of the players suffering from osteitis pubis. The research was segmented into two parts. In the first part a total of 35 healthy subjects were selected (with adequate somatic indexes and a minimum of 5 years of sport activity in this branch), tested both in static and dynamic, and the data obtained was recorded and used in order to create average values in order to make comparisons with the data obtained in the second part . In the second part football players diagnosed with osteitis pubis were selected (with the same features as those from the first part) and tested in the same way. The results obtained in these athletes will be analyzed and compared with the average value obtained from the healthy individuals. This comparative study will provide information on how to approach the recovery treatment of osteitis pubis, on creating complex, optimal programs which would enable the shortening of the competition reintegration period.