Sports injuries: Temming the tide

Meet Dr Venkatesh Movva, president of the Elite Football League of India (EFLI) and an expert in sports medicine and regenerative orthopedics.

His passion for American football led the US-based doctor to own the Oklahoma Thunder football team. He has also founded Hyderabad Skykings — the first professional American football team in Hyderabad.

Being a sports person and an expert in sports medicine, he is aware of knee injuries a football player suffers. And to get them back on the field, he is using stem cells to understand and treat these injuries.

“A classic example is the case of knee osteoarthritis. The only option till now was total knee replacement. Now with this technology we can heal and regenerate the lost tissues like cartilage, meniscus and ligaments to reverse arthritis and in turn, avoiding any major surgery. Patients return to their loved activities in no time,” he says.

“I found sports and medicine was a good marriage as an athlete and doctor. During my early days, before I became a doctor entrepreneur, I started engaging with athletes and began to learn and know about their ortho-related injuries. Then I realised there was a great relevance for stem cell orthopaedics to become a mainstream procedure as it had tremendous regenerative possibilities,” he explains.

“The regenerative science in stem cell orthopaedics also has strong data backed by research. It is an evidence-based procedure and this became the catalyst for me to pursue it to help athletes and non-athletes to overcome early, mild and moderate ortho problems in a simple way by avoiding surgery.”

The doctor-entrepreneur, who owns the Oklahoma Thunder, a semi-pro football team in the US, and Hyderabad SkyKings, says, “I am kind of involved with sports, not just football but both medically as well as business-wise, which made the transition easier when I heard about the idea of the EFLI launch in the Indian sub-continent. The association with EFLI is an extension of what I was doing back in the States.”

“My passion for sports began from high school. I used to be a pretty good table tennis player. Then the passion for sports combined with academics took me to sports medicine as a career. I continue to be involved as a team physician and a fan of various sports,” adds Dr Movva.