REVIEWS   

Minerva Ortopedica e Traumatologica 2015 December 66(6):271-84

Copyright © 2015 EDIZIONI MINERVA MEDICA

lingua: Inglese

Evaluation and rehabilitation of elbow injuries in the youth athlete

Leahy I. ¹, Schorpion M. ²

¹ Sports Medicine and Performance Center, Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, Philadelphia, PA, USA; ² Sarasota Outpatient Care Center, All Children’s Hospital Sports Medicine, Sarasota, FL, USA

As the level of participation in year-round sports grows, so does the number of overuse injuries in the adolescent population, which was once considered a diagnosis reserved for the skeletally mature athlete. The increased forces generated with overhead throwing are leading to injuries across the weaker growth plates, resulting in failure of bony tissue, with the elbow being a site of high vulnerability due to mechanical flaws in a throwing motion. Rehabilitation in this population requires not only close attention to the local structures involved, but more importantly to the proximal portion of the entire kinetic chain, including but not limited to the involvement of core stability in the overall sensorimotor system.