How an Elite High-performance Weightlifter with Spine Pain Became a Silver and Gold Olympic Winner: A Case Report

Abstract

Spine pain affects athletes’ performance and is a common reason for missed playing time. Return-to-play is the main concern for patients; for this reason, treatment must be evaluated under these criteria. Nonsurgical treatment and specific physical rehabilitation should be the first option. There are few reports using endoscopic spine surgery in high-performance weightlifters. We report a successful case of a 33-year-old elite high-performance weightlifter with cervical and lumbar intervertebral disc hernias, who, after anterior cervical endoscopic discectom in 2009 and then a transforaminal lumbar endoscopic discetomy and percutaneous interspinours space in 2014, won silver and gold Olympic medals, set an Olympic record, and won a weightlifting world championship after. We concluded that return-to-play after 2 endoscopic spine surgeries was possible for a high-performance weightlifter. Endoscopic spine surgery is an alternative to treat spine pain in elite high-performance athletes. Key words: Intervertebral disc hernia, weightlifter, endoscopic spine surgery, gold medal, silver medal, Olympic games, case report.