A Proposal for Functional Screening of the Throwing Kinetic Chain in Baseball Pitchers to Assess Shoulder and Elbow Injury Risk
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.17140/SEMOJ-1-122Keywords:
Elbow injury, Pitchers, UCLAbstract
Overhead throwing athletes are susceptible to overuse injuries in the upper extremity, specifically of the shoulder and elbow. These injuries can include rotator cuff tears, labral tears, and ulnar collateral ligament sprains and can affect athletes at all levels of their sport. To address this growing epidemic, musculoskeletal screens and assessments are used to identify risk factors associated with injuries. Though the baseball pitching delivery has been extensively studied in biomechanical laboratories, a clear consensus agreement of the essential tests and measures is still lacking, both as a pre-participation assessment of injury risk and for return to
sport criteria. Most recent research has been focused on the contributing factors of the entire kinetic chain, relating deficits in the kinetic chain to impairments seen in the upper extremity which may lead to shoulder and elbow injury. The purpose of this article is to use the essential components of the throwing kinetic chain to propose a novel screening assessment for the over head throwing athlete, which can be used as a pre-participation assessment of injury risk or for return to sport criteria.
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