Finnish orthopedic surgeon Dr Jussi Rantanen yesterday (Tuesday) concluded a two-day visit to Bahrain where he provided some of his vast experience at the Bahrain Olympic Committee’s (BOC) National Sports Medicine Centre in Isa Town.
The visit is part of the National Sports Medicine Centre plan to offer the best quality medical treatment services for both athletes and ordinary people.
“I was offered so many complex, but excellent cases in terms of where I can help and this if a very good start,” said Rantanen, who is presently based in Dubai for his daughter to complete her academic studies.
Rantanen has been an orthopedic surgeon since 1998 and is a founder of a hospital in Finland six years ago and is still chairman of the board.
“We have already appointed a few other team members, all from Finland, as I’m specialized in keens and ankles while others are specialized in shoulders, back surgeries, tendon and muscle injuries,” he said.
“Bahrain has almost all needed equipment and facilities to run the treatment. However, it’s not that much of equipment anymore. It’s about how to use them and what are the indications and basically it’s a learning process.”
Rantanen believes that the athletes are car industry uses Formula 1s to develop ordinary cars into something more sophisticated and advanced.
“We treat athletes with zero tolerance of failure basically. If they are not 100 per cent they lose their jobs. Even 98 per cent is not enough. So it’s like Formula 1 world,” said Rantanen.
“With the lessons we learn from treating athletes, we can implement in treating ordinary people because they have same problems. However, 98 per cent return of normal people is good enough when u talk about middle aged people.
Rantanen also brought up some of the obstacles that surgeons have when treating an injured athlete.
“Probably one of the biggest obstacles that we have is the top athletes always hope for the best and don’t really realize something should be looked at.
“They wait too much to treat their injuries, not with acute injuries, but with stress injuries that come from training too much because they are afraid of losing time in training and their spot on the team and trying to fight that symptom that would have been very easy to treat”.
“The earlier they come in for help usually the better, the milder the case. Go see the doctor a little bit too early rather than a little bit too late. And that’s the same with Formula 1, so you fix the little problems before they become big problems and lose your race,” added Rantanen.
