Sports Medicine

When a professional athlete in middle age can maintain elite performance, they join a short list. It includes George Blanda, the NFL quarterback and kicker who retired at 48 after 26 seasons; tennis star Martina Navratilova, who won a Grand Slam title two months shy of her 50th birthday; and swimmer Dara Torres, who at 41 earned three silver medals at the Olympics. Then there's boxer Bernard Hopkins, who on Saturday could become the oldest fighter to win a major world title.

Paoli Memorial Hospital is about to offer medical services in the Exton area, also served by Brandywine Hospital. Paoli Hospital and the Hankin Group have signed a letter of intent to develop a medical arts center at Eagleview Corporate Center in Exton, a 600- acre complex near the Route 23 exit of the Pennsylvania Turnpike. Eagleview is now a collection of seven office and industrial buildings. Eventually it will include retail space and 500 single homes, townhouses and apartments.

Small businesses trying to resolve specific problems can turn to a new program developed by the Lower Bucks County Chamber of Commerce - B.O.S.S. (Business Owners Seeking Solutions). "Larger businesses can afford to hire a professional to address the problem. This is a service to the small-business community," said Milton J. Moser, who chairs the chamber's B.O.S.S. subcommittee. The B.O.S.S. roundtable meetings, which were introduced in February, are held from 8 to 9 a.m. on the fourth Wednesday of each month at the chamber's Fairless Hills office.

It is highly unlikely that Eagles wide receiver Terrell Owens will be fit enough to play again this season, according to several Philadelphia orthopedic specialists. Not even in the Super Bowl - if the Eagles make it. The specialists said yesterday that Owens would need months to recover fully from the severe ankle injury he sustained Sunday in the Eagles' 12-7 win over the Dallas Cowboys. "This is a long recovery. It is a major injury," said Pekka Mooar, associate professor of orthopedics and sports medicine at Temple University, who hasn't personally evaluated Owens.

When I told my mom I wanted to play high school football, she refused to sign the permission form, threatening, "If you got hurt, I'd break both your legs. " Mom's peculiar logic aside, these days I see her point: Why do parents allow their kids to play football? It's got the highest injury rate of all high school sports - 4.36 per 1,000 practices and games (also called athletic exposures), according to the Centers for Disease Control. (The overall injury rate for all sports combined is 2.44 per 1,000 athletic exposures.

Keeping workers healthy on the job will be the focus of a seminar May 6 at the Adam's Mark Hotel in Philadelphia. The seminar, which will run from 1 to 5 p.m., was organized by U.S. Regional Occupational and Sports Medicine of Huntingdon Valley in cooperation with the Philadelphia Pain Society. The cost of the program is $65 for Pain Society members and $75 for nonmembers. At the seminar, seven speakers will talk about controlling the cost of health care, limiting the loss of revenue caused by employee absenteeism, and reducing the likelihood of injuries on the job. Their backgrounds include occupational medicine, biomechanics, rehabilitation, law, employee assistance and health care.

Howard Palamarchuk is back from Seoul, where he was not a participant in the Olympic Games. He did, however, participate in the Seoul Olympics Scientific Congress, a gathering of about 2,000 specialists in sports medicine from throughout the world. In fact, he presented a paper. And he just may have expended nearly as much energy enunciating its title as he would have competing in, say, the 20- kilometer walk. The title: "The Mechanics and Use of Carbon Fiber Composite Materials in the Fabrication of Biomechanical Foot Orthoses for Competitive Athletic Shoes.

JOGGING DEATHS Runners, if the deaths of two competitors in the recent Pittsburgh Marathon has you spooked, take note: In as many as 98 percent of such cases, autopsies show that victims had severe coronary artery disease, although they might not have known it. Because even record-holders can experience sudden death while exercising, Steven Van Camp, an American College of Sports Medicine official, urges runners 30 or older to get a physical examination....

Question 6 of the Daily News high school athletes survey dealt with career goals. When asked to identify careers other than sports they would like to pursue, 34 of the student-athletes who responded to this question picked careers in "business;" 29 replied "engineering;" and 24 said "accounting. " Temple basketball coach John Chaney chuckled. "The arrow points to M-O-N-E-Y, which is not surprising," he said. "My guess is if, instead of engineering and business, kids thought that sitting on poles could make them wealthy, pole-sitting would have been at the top of the list.

The athlete shimmies onto the doctor's examining table and gingerly tries to extend his bare leg. The doctor already knows there's been damage to the knee and begins to discuss the possible approaches. Surgery, physical therapy, rest, recuperation - none sounds particularly appealing to the young athlete. In pain and disappointment, the athlete reaches out for his mom's hand, struggling to hold back tears. More and more, sports medicine professionals are describing this scene.