New Delhi, May 27 (IANS): Indian Federation of Sports Medicine president P.S.M.Chandran said that when physiotherapists like Andrew Leipus style themselves as doctors, athletes like Gautam Gambhir become the victims of improper and inadequate management of injuries.

Taking a strong note of Gambhir's injury issue, Chandran, an eminent sports medicine specialist, said the Kolkata Knight Rider captain's injury also is a sad commentary on the way sportspersons hide their injuries and also the manner in which their injuries are managed by physiotherapists and doctors.

"Very often team physiotherapists shy away from showing the injured athlete to competent sports medicine doctors when an injury happens and instead try to manage it all by themselves. If Leipus is to be believed, even a routine and mandatory investigation like MRI has been carried out as lately as the penultimate days of the current IPL season though Gambhir has been suffering from the injury during the last couple of years. It is not clear who is maintaining the medical records of Gambhir and whether the BCCI, Daredevils and Knight Riders who have owned him had any access to those records," he said.

"It is also frightening to know from AL that GG had multiple injections of corticosteroid in his right shoulder during the past two years. Sports doctors are normally cautious in giving steroid injections into joints as they are aware of the dangerous consequences of this injection. These injections give temporary relief, but when the athlete starts taking heavy training load subsequently, the area injected fails to cope up with the load, the pain resurfaces and it turns out to be a chronic injury," Chandran added.