VANCOUVER, BC – Vancouver Whitecaps FC’s sports medicine and science team is always looking for new ways to enhance the care of its players.
Part of that involves using different injury prevention techniques, such as monitoring the fitness of players through heart-rate monitors and making assessments accordingly, but injuries are inevitable in professional sports – making treatment equally important.
A new tool the team has been using to treat certain soft tissue and bone injuries is the Pulsed Energy Replenisher, an electromagnetic device that creates a stimulus in the tissues to enhance healing. The device was developed by California-based Pulsed Energy Technologies.
“We are both very excited and extremely proud to form an alliance with a major professional sports organization like Whitecaps FC,” said Pulsed Energy Technologies president Josh Silver. “This only adds to the growing support for the clinical use of PEMF Therapy, and the PER 2000.”
Rick Celebrini, Whitecaps FC’s head of sports medicine and science, came across the machine early last season through friend Aaron Nelson, who is the head athletic trainer of the NBA’s Phoenix Suns.
“They used it quite extensively with a lot of different conditions,” Celebrini told whitecapsfc.com. “We thought it was worth a try.”
The first case was a bruised calcaneus bone in the left foot of former ‘Caps midfielder Michael Nanchoff.
“It was really, really stubborn and it wasn’t settling down very quickly,” Celebrini said of the injury. “They sent a unit up to trial it and we had a really good response with Nano and some of the other conditions, so we kept using it permanently.”
Since then, Celebrini said his team has used the device for various types of injuries, including inflamed joints, contusions, muscle strains, ligament strains, and primarily bone contusions and bruises.
Through a loop applicator, the Pulsed Energy Replenisher helps replicate the body’s natural electrical signals, which usually need a boost of energy when injured, tired, or weak. The loop applicator surrounds the injured area and the electricity formed by the device then passes through the cells at a powerful rate to restore the body’s vital energy.
“It’s another tool,” Celebrini said. “For some conditions, we find it really effective. It just provides us with another way to be comprehensive in our care for our players.”
