Technology Used in the Prevention and Treatment of Shoulder and Elbow Injuries in the Overhead Athlete

• Published in: Current reviews in musculoskeletal medicine Vol. 13; no. 4; pp. 472 - 478
• Main Authors: Vellios, Evan E., Pinnamaneni, Sridhar, Camp, Christopher L., Dines, Joshua S.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: New York Springer US 01.08.2020
• Subjects: Injuries in Overhead Athletes (J Dines and C Camp; Injuries in Overhead Athletes (J Dines and C Camp, Section Editors); Medicine; Medicine & Public Health; Minimally Invasive Surgery; Orthopedics; Rehabilitation Medicine; Section Editors; Sports Medicine; Surgery; Surgical Orthopedics; Topical Collection on Injuries in Overhead Athletes; Injury prevention; Sports science; Technology; Shoulder and elbow; Overhead athlete; Analytics
• ISSN: 1935-973X; 1935-9748; 1935-9748
• DOI: 10.1007/s12178-020-09645-9

Purpose of Review To review the current technology available for the prevention and treatment of shoulder and elbow injuries in the overhead athlete. Recent Findings Shoulder and elbow injuries are common in recreational and high-level overhead athletes. Injury prevention in these athletes include identifying modifiable risk factors, offering effective preventative training programs, and establishing safe return-to-sport criteria. The advent and use of technologies and wearable devices with concomitant development of software and data analytic programs has significantly changed the role of sports technology in injury identification and prevention. Over the last few decades, leveraging new technologies to better understand and treat patients has become an increasing focus of healthcare. Technologies currently being applied to the treatment of the overhead athlete include kinesiotaping, heart rate monitors, accelerometers/gyroscopes, dynamometers/force plates, camera-based monitoring systems (optical motion analysis), and inertial sensor monitoring units. Summary Advances in technology have made it possible to acquire large amounts of data on athletes that may be used to guide treatment and injury prevention programs; however, literature validating the clinical efficacy of many of these technologies is limited. Further research is needed to continue to allow team physicians to provide better, cost-efficient, and individualized care to the overhead athlete using technology.