CHICAGO, Ill.
High school pitcher Chris Widdup can throw the heat.
"Anywhere from like 81 to 83 miles an hour," WIddup told Ivanhoe.
But it took a toll on his arm. "Especially when I picked up a baseball. It was throbbing," Widdup recalled.
Doctors said surgery was his best option. "What we're finding is that parents are pushing their kids harder," Joseph Guettler, M.D., orthopedic surgeon at Beaumont Hospital in Royal Oak, Mich., said. "They're starting earlier. They're playing more months of the year. It's leading to more problems."
A leading sports medicine specialist says the number of kids in his practice having elbow reconstruction, or Tommy John surgeries, is nearly 16 times higher today compared to the mid-nineties.
"If you injure yourself when you're young," Dr. Guettler explained. "It can have repercussions when you're older. You can develop arthritis. You can develop rotator cuff problems."
Researchers at Rush University Medical Center are using high-speed cameras and equipment to study an athlete's arm motion, hoping to develop safer pitching strategies. For adolescents, doctors say limit play to six to eight months a year. No more than 80 to 100 pitches a game. Get four to five days rest between games. No curve balls before age 14. They put added strain on the elbow. And contrary to popular belief, softball "windmill" pitching puts twice the stress on the bicep as overhand pitching, according to a study done at Rush Univeristy Medical Center.
"As an athlete, you push through," Missy Beseres, a professional softball player said. "You don't just stop."
"There needs to be some restrictions on how much they throw and how often," Nikhil Verma, M.D., sports medicine specialist at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago, Ill., said.
Surgeons at Rush University fixed Widdup's arm. Now, he knows his limits and is hoping to take his strike zone to the collegiate level.
The American Orthopaedic Society for Sports Medicine recently launched a nationwide study on baseball pitching injuries in kids. Its goal is to study the impact of the injuries on a child's growth plates and look for ways to predict the problems before they happen.
FOR MORE INFORMATION, CONTACT:
Sharon Butler
Rush Unviersity Medical Center
Media Relations
Chicago, IL
sharon_butler@rush.edu
