123: AAOS Annual Meeting Updates: Return to Performance Following UCL Surgery in MLB Pitchers

The Sports Docs Podcast

We are kicking off a special series of episodes to recap the new research presented at the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons Annual Meeting, our largest orthopaedic conference. This year, over 20,000 orthopedic professionals gathered at the AAOS meeting in San Diego to take part.

The educational program was comprised of instructional course lectures, video theater, live surgeries, podium presentations and research posters. Over the next several episodes we’re going to be reviewing seven sports medicine posters that were presented at the AAOS meeting.

On this podcast we try to review the most updated literature on different sports medicine topics. So, reviewing some of the posters that were just presented at AAOS is particularly exciting for us because this is very new data. So new that most of this data has not even been published yet.

So, let’s get started with our first poster, titled Return to Performance Following UCL Surgery in Major League Baseball Pitchers. While return to play is very important for both players and teams, arguably even more important is return to performance. With advancements in pitch tracking analysis and analytics, it is now possible to determine return to full performance, based on comparison of preop and postop metrics.

This retrospective analysis was performed by Dr. Christopher Ahmad and team at Columbia University. 119 MLB pictures who underwent primary UCL reconstruction or repair were evaluated. Return to play rates at 1- 2- and 3-years postop were reported. Additionally, the authors looked at performance data, including innings pitched as well as pitch-tracking data.

Overall, surgery remains an effective option for MLB pitchers to return to play and performance following a UCL injury. However, athletes should be counseled that certain pitches may be negatively impacted postoperatively.