[Groin pain in athletes : What does the sports physician expect from the radiologist?]

Background: Especially in sports like professional football (soccer) making a diagnosis and generating a final prognosis concerning the time loss is demanding for the team physician and the radiologist. Therefore, the radiologist has to fulfill the requests concerning availability and quality of imaging. This is a particularly difficult task for groin pain because it can be caused by a variety of pathologies.

Objectives: In addition to the question what the sports physician expects from the radiologist, we have to look at which information the radiologist needs to answer the raised questions. Which external circumstances make a change of the normal procedures necessary when supporting athletes?

Results and discussion: Close collaboration between the radiologist and sports physician guarantees that the raised questions from the athlete and the club concerning time loss and necessary therapy can be answered. Thus, the sports physician has to give the radiologist detailed information regarding symptoms, location of the pain and other clinical findings. The radiologist has to include this information into the interpretation of the images to distinguish safely between findings caused by the actual injury and those which are pre-existing.