Care of the Contact Athlete’s Shoulder

I am excited to feature the series “Care of the Contact Athlete’s Shoulder” in Annals of Joint (AOJ). The shoulder is a complex joint requiring extensive motion and strength in several directions. The contact athlete’s shoulder is particularly important due to the unique forces it is exposed to. Age plays an important role in shoulder pathology seen in contact athletes with instability being common in younger patients; however other injury patterns such as those to the rotator cuff, biceps, pectoralis, brachial plexus, acromioclavicular and sternoclavicular joints do occur. More senior athletes may be at greater risk for rotator cuff and tendinous injuries.

Treating and team physicians must understand the distinct injury patterns seen in contact athletes as well as the unique treatments, both operative and non-operative. After appropriate care, progressive return to play with non-operative care is essential with the use of objective measures such as normalization of strength, speed, and agility. Validated return to sport shoulder testing is very useful and recommended. Constant communication with the athlete regarding their symptoms during progression allows appropriate advancement with the hope of reducing reinjury. Specific surgical techniques are essential for contact athletes as well. For example, in a throwing athlete, one must not over tension the capsule during an instability repair, but with a contact athlete a larger bite of capsule may allow greater shoulder stability. The expert authors nicely cover these topics for the reader to improve their care of the contact athlete’s shoulder.

Acknowledgments

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Footnote

Provenance and Peer Review: This article was commissioned by the editorial office, Annals of Joint for the series “Care of the Contact Athlete’s Shoulder”. The article did not undergo external peer review.

Funding: None.

Conflicts of Interest: The author has completed the ICMJE uniform disclosure form (available at https://aoj.amegroups.com/article/view/10.21037/aoj-25-66/coif). The series “Care of the Contact Athlete’s Shoulder” was commissioned by the editorial office without any funding or sponsorship. J.W.A. served as the unpaid Guest Editor of the series and serves as an unpaid editorial board member of Annals of Joint from October 2024 to December 2026. The author has no other conflicts of interest to declare.

Ethical Statement: The author is accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved.

Open Access Statement: This is an Open Access article distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0), which permits the non-commercial replication and distribution of the article with the strict proviso that no changes or edits are made and the original work is properly cited (including links to both the formal publication through the relevant DOI and the license). See: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/.

Justin W. Arner