Physiotherapy Conferences 2026 |Rehab & sports medicine congress | Physical Therapy Events

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April O’Connell

April O’Connell

Cedars Sinai Hospital

April Oâ€™Connell, OTR/L, CHT, ACSM is an occupational therapist at Cedars Sinai Hospital in Beverly Hills, CA. She works with a variety of sports teams including the NFL, MLB and NBA and recently spoke at ASHT 2024 on the topic "Exercise as Medicine" and again in 2022 at ASHT and AAHS on the topic Rehabilitation of the Overhead Athlete. She is one of the main contributors to the fellowship program for hand and upper extremity rehabilitation as well as the co-director for Cedars Sinai Hand Symposium. April got her start as the Clinical Specialist in the Hand and Upper Extremity Therapy Department at NYU Langone Health. She has lectured to orthopedic surgeons and therapists nationally and internationally in current concepts of orthopedic rehabilitation of the upper extremity. Some of her most recent lectures include being a guest speaker for Dr. Radio on Sirius Satellite on topics for rehabilitation of the hand and upper extremity as well as injuries to the overhead athlete. In addition, she has presented on Flexor Tendon Repair Advancement at AAOS in 2015 and was later asked to speak at ASSH national conference in 2016 and ASHT in 2017. She recently presented her latest research at ASHT National Conference on flexor tendon rehabilitation in 2019. April is a founding member of the NYU Langone Golf and Pitching Labs and was the head hand therapist for the first successful bilateral hand and face allotransplantation. She earned her Occupational Therapy degree at Boston University, is a Certified Hand Therapist and is certified by the American Council of Sports Medicine (ACSM) as a Clinical Exercise Specialist. There are no financial or non-financial disclosures to report.

United States

Abstracts

2025

Treatment of the overhead athlete; a new evidenced based approach to the throwers ten

Hand therapists are trained in treating patients from the finger to the shoulder and our basic schooling has taught the therapist how to look globally and at the athlete as a whole. This presentation will provide a comprehensive understanding of the physical demands of the overhead athlete, how to perform a total body examination based on evidenced-based practice, as well as treatment strategies based on the athlete’s occupational profile. It is imperative that each clinician treats the whole athlete and remains patient-centered rather than “spot treating”. A detailed literature review of best available evidence as well as “out of the box’ treatment techniques will be presented on including demonstration of novel, multi-joint, multi-planar thrower’s ten exercises that we have recently studied using surface EMG technology to demonstrate the effectiveness of these exercises.

Learning objectives are as follows:
• Understand how deficits in the lower extremities affect the upper body and conduct a comprehensive screen to evaluate the athlete’s stability and mobility for injury prevention and efficiency in performance.

• Confidently break down the functional role of the overhead athlete, and then administer advanced therapeutic exercises mimicking the client’s occupation using multi-planar, multi-vector movements