ORLANDO, Fla. (Ivanhoe Newswire) — A torn UCL is common in baseball, especially for pitchers. The usual treatment is Tommy John surgery. More than 2,400 Tommy John surgeries have been performed on the elbows of professional baseball players, and according to a study by Chicago’s Rush University Medical Center, the biggest age group needing Tommy John surgery in the country is between 15- and 19-years old! But could an alternative way of dealing with this type of injury be better than surgery?
From childhood to college, Carter Craig has been playing baseball. While pitching in a college game, he started to feel a pain in his elbow. With every throw it got worse.
“I couldn’t be able to throw a baseball with any intent, any force,” Carter recalled.
Sports medicine orthopedic surgeon Randy Schwartzberg, MD, said surgery wasn’t the only fix.
“Not being able to do one of the most basic things that you’ve been doing since you were four years old is very challenging,” Carter told Ivanhoe.
About 36% of active MLB pitchers had surgery called Tommy John, and the number keeps rising.
“We take a tendon from another part of the body, either the forearm, the wrist, forearm area, and we replace the UCL with that and fix it securely,” Dr. Schwartzberg described.
But now there’s another way to repair a torn UCL, an internal brace.
“A tool that we use in UCL surgery to allow us to repair the UCL as opposed to putting a new tendon in there,” said Dr. Schwartzberg.
Is it better than the surgery? It depends on the severity of the injury. If your UCL is still good but has a tear, you can repair it and use an internal brace, if not, opt for Tommy John.
“The advantage to being able to use the internal brace over the Tommy John is that the person gets to keep their native UCL and it’s less work on their body, less work on the elbow,” Dr. Schwartzberg explained.
Whether it’s having a brace or surgery, the goal is the same — heal up and get back on the mound.
An NIH study said that a UCL repair with an internal brace had a 98% return-to-sport rate and a shorter recovery time compared to traditional UCL reconstruction.
Contributors to this news report include: Cliff Tumetel, Producer; Chuck Bennethum & Bob Walko, Videographers; Roque Correa, Editor.
Sources:
https://www.mlb.com/news/tommy-john-surgery-50th-anniversary
https://doi.org/10.1177/03635465251314054
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/03635465251314054
* For More Information, Contact: Randy Schwartzberg, MD
Sports Medicine Orthopedic Surgeon at Orlando Orthopaedic Center
Free weekly e-mail on Prescription: Health from Ivanhoe. To sign up: http://www.ivanhoe.com/ftk
