SAN ANTONIO — World-renowned golfer Tiger Woods faces a long and difficult road to recovery after surviving a rollover crash Tuesday in California. Orthopaedic surgeons in San Antonio treat patients with similar injuries throughout the year, including athletes and wounded military personnel.
“This (is) complex, high-energy trauma. This is a bad injury,” said Baptist Health’s Dr. Lane Naugher, referring to Woods’s injuries sustained in the rollover accident. “He has fractures of at least his right leg, possibly the left but the right leg is several fractures, one of which being open so his tibia or the shin bone, and it sounds like he has some ankle and foot fractures as well."
Medical experts are comparing Wood’s injury to what happened to NFL quarterback Alex Smith in 2018.
The lower part of Smith’s leg eventually broke in half and he suffered an infection that nearly took his leg.
Smith’s incredible comeback to the football field unfolded in San Antonio at the Center for the Intrepid, the rehab center at Brooke Army Medical Center.
Dr. Matthew Schmitz, with the Center for the Intrepid, said regaining motion again will be among the several challenges Woods faces.
“Finally, (that) is the strength process and that sometimes can take the longest because the muscle’s atrophy are getting weak with this type of injury so all of these things are already starting in an injury like that,” Schmitz said.
Schmitz said that, whether it’s with athletes or wounded warriors, one of the greatest barriers to overcoming a traumatic injury is wat’s happening in the mind.
“In the height of the conflicts in the Middle East, that’s what we treat here at BAMC and the Center for the Intrepid," Schmitz said. "Mentally, we see that in all kinds of sports injuries, whether it’s a knee injury with an ACL tear, we know in adolescents and athletes that’s it’s almost like a mental hit that they go through, kind of like a mini-depression."
To learn more about the Center for the Intrepid, click here.