The recovery of Colombian cyclist Egan Arley Bernal is on the right track. Rehabilitation progress has surprised 27 days after the serious accident.
On their social networks, Bernal and his family have been in charge of publishing the day to day of his life after the incident, when he crashed into a bus on January 27 when he was training on the time trial bike.
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The videos walking, pedaling, playing soccer and exercising have made an impact and have caused great admiration for how quickly the rehabilitation is advancing.
It is not strange to get excited when seeing the advances that the 2019 Tour de France champion has presented confirming his courage, the desire to get ahead above all else.
The polytraumatisms that he presented led to the fact that he could become a paraplegic and could even have died, but Bernal was treated in the best way and 14 days after his admission to the Universidad de la Sabana Clinic he was discharged.
the mind part
Recently the Italian press pointed out that Bernal spoke with his manager, Guiseppe Acquadro, and in that dialogue he asked him how the recovery of the cyclist Marco Pantani had been, who crashed into a car on October 18, 1995 in the Milan- Turin, he fractured the tibia and the femur of his right leg.
Acquadro told Bernal about the incident and that Pantani reappeared in competition a year and two months later and that he won the 1998 Giro and Tour.
“You have to manage the anxiety, the times, from experience you have to take that calmly.”
EL TIEMPO consulted specialists in orthopedic treatments and psychological evolution, who have been surprised by Bernal’s evolution, which makes him look like the cyclist who wants to continue devouring the world’s roads.
“It is a trained body. The recovery processes in an athlete are faster, but he is an athlete of high challenges. He has clear goals in his process and does his best to do so. You have to manage the anxiety, the times, from experience you have to take that calmly. There are fears, they are natural, and you have to know how to deal with them. He is conditioned to do the job faster than an ordinary person and his evolution is very positive”, said Fernando Rivera, sports psychologist.
Bernal suffered minor head trauma, non-displaced cervical spine fracture, lung perforation, fracture of the t5 and t6 thoracic vertebra, fracture of the femur and the right patella, among the most important injuries.
Seeing it in motion bodes well for things to come. “He has two advantages: he is young and he is a high-performance athlete, that will help the tissues to recover faster. He has a tolerance for pain that is very different from that of any patient,” said Luis Alfredo Moreno, orthopedic doctor and traumatologist.
“He already does cardio work, he pedals in a few days. The muscular rehabilitation and conditioning part is effective”, Moreno specified.
key, knee
Within the injuries there is one that is hardly talked about, but that is worrying, according to the evolution that it presents: the fracture of the patella.
“The knee for a cyclist is the axis and he had an open, multiple fracture and the cartilage can suffer. We have to wait to see how the articular cartilage of the patella evolves, so it doesn’t bother you. Egan spent almost two weeks in bed, it is an attack on the entire musculoskeletal system and the muscles atrophy. The youth and the desire are going to carry it forward and that has been seen ”, Moreno added.
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The Clinic’s Neurosurgery group performed a reduction of a fracture dislocation from level T5 to T6 and instrumentation was achieved from T3 to T8, maintaining intact neurological integrity and preserving the functionality of the involved segments.
“He could be quadriplegic or die. He has an injury at the level of the junction of the skull and the spine. According to the movements, Bernal has an intrinsic capacity for improvement and that has to do with his mental disposition to rehabilitate himself ”, said Enrique Osorio, head of neurosurgery at the Los Cobos clinic and president of the 17th world congress of neurosurgery in Bogotá from March 13 to 18.
“He is within the guidelines for what he is and for his excellent rehabilitation management,” Osorio concluded.
Oriana González is a physiotherapist for the Colombian Olympic Committee and the Ministry of Sport and spoke about the runner’s process.
“He is already doing weight downloads, which indicates that the correction of the femur problem was corrected.”
“He doesn’t move his neck much because he’s in the healing process of that bone tissue: A rehabilitation process is carried out that includes exercises in other areas. He is already doing weight downloads, which indicates that the correction of the femur problem was corrected, ”he indicated.
“After these injuries the body atrophies and in rehabilitation one focuses on the undamaged areas not losing muscle tone and strength,” said the physiotherapist.
For Miguel Niño, director of the IDRD Sports Medicine Unit, Bernal’s evolution is surprising.
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“In relation to serious injuries, we are talking about a fairly good evolution, above that of common athletes. For after four weeks to be walking without support is very good. Being able to bend the knee to pedal is quite advanced,” said Niño.
And I add: “It is a pleasure to see him in an early rehab. You can see his prodigious physiology and mentally you see that he is taking on challenges and that he is a fighter”, Nino specified.
Of course, evolution must go step by step, without eagerness. “That he already pedals is very good, because the knee injury is always complicated. The subject of the column, well, the same, because it has its plates that make it rigid. Those bars are metallic alloys that after a while can be removed when the fractures stabilize. It will only be known how it has evolved from full mobility to rotate or turn the trunk when they are removed, but the evolution it has had is surprising “Nino said.
It may interest you: (Egan Bernal, with a cane, follows his recovery step by step)
Lisandro Rengifo
Editor of THE TIME
@lisandroabel
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