Risk factors for shoulder and elbow pain in youth baseball players

Objectives: This study sought to quantify the 1-year cumulative incidence of shoulder and elbow pain among youth baseball players and identify risk factors associated with the occurrence of shoulder and elbow pain.
Methods: In total, 900 youth baseball players (aged 7–11 years) were enrolled in a 1-year prospective follow-up study. One year later, subjects were asked whether they had experienced episodes of shoulder or elbow pain and the following risk factors for such pain were investigated: age, position, length of baseball experience, training hours per week, and history of shoulder or elbow pain. Data for the groups with and without shoulder or elbow pain were analyzed using multivariate logistic regression models.
Results: Episodes of shoulder pain were reported by 18.3% of players and episodes of elbow pain were reported by 35.2% of players. Multivariate analysis showed that shoulder pain was associated with playing pitcher, catcher, increasing training hours per week, and history of shoulder and elbow pain, and that elbow pain was associated with increasing age, playing pitcher, catcher, increasing training hours per week, and history of elbow pain. Length of baseball experience was not associated with shoulder or elbow pain.
Conclusion: History of elbow pain, playing pitcher, catcher and increasing training hours per week were associated with both types of pain. History of shoulder pain was associated with shoulder pain but not elbow pain. Increasing age was associated with elbow pain but not shoulder pain.

This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in The Physician and Sportsmedicine on 09/03/2017, available online: http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/00913847.2017.1300505.