TY - JOUR T1 - What's hot today? Current topics in sports and exercise medicine JF - British Journal of Sports Medicine JO - Br J Sports Med SP - 1 LP - 2 DO - 10.1136/bjsports-2012-091965 VL - 47 IS - 1 AU - David J Berkoff Y1 - 2013/01/01 UR - http://bjsm.bmj.com/content/47/1/1.abstract N2 - This American Medical Society for Sports Medicine (AMSSM)-shaped issue of BJSM highlights ‘hot topics’ in sports medicine. The Merriam-Webster's dictionary defines ‘hot’ as: of intense and immediate interest. I used this simple definition to guide AMSSM's selection of articles for this issue. This issue's selections are clearly ‘hot topics’ but to whom are they considered ‘hot?’ What defines a sport and exercise medicine practitioner? Is it the team physician who cares for the professional or elite athlete? Is it the paediatrician who encourages the obese adolescent to put down the Wii controller and get outside? Or is it the cardiologist who dedicates herself to getting a heart failure patient back to tolerating light exercise? How does someone best describe what we do for our patients? We as ‘sports and exercise medicine’ providers have a unique role that encompasses multiple specialties, age groups and patient populations. We are tasked with prescreening athletes prior to activity, preventing and treating all manners of sporting injury. We care for the elderly, the young and those with chronic illness. We follow patients after injuries and are often the experts consulted with difficult and challenging medical cases that are both medical and sports related. We are a diverse group and we meet a wide range of needs. Thus, choosing what is ‘hot’ and relevant to everyone reading this AMSSM-shaped issue was challenging. So how did we select these articles? There are hundreds of topics of interest to the sports and exercise medicine practitioner, but which of these are of interest to our … ER -