Background

Incidence of shoulder and elbow injuries in baseball pitchers have never been this high. Couple of studies focus on the position of scapula to evaluate the overhead sports athletes’ shoulder or elbow, but rarely check the height of scapula in static standing. A test to evaluate easily is needed to check many children all over the world.

Objectives
The purpose of this study is to investigate whether static standing scapular height could predict the incidence of shoulder and elbow injuries in elite high school baseball pitchers.

Study Design & Methods
41 high school baseball pitchers who participated the national high school tournament in Spring and Summer of 2017 through 2019 in Japan were evaluated in each year before the tournament. We excluded the pitchers who had previous history of shoulder or elbow injury but no pain at the evaluation (n=18). Inferior angle of scapula of height were evaluated whether same or 1-2 fingerbreadth difference by a Certified Athletic Trainer at a clinical setting. The pitchers who have same scapula height were set in Group A(n=10). The pitchers who have more than 1 fingerbreadth drop were set in Group B(n=13). Those pitchers were asked if they have never had a problem or have a pain currently in their shoulder or elbow. Chi-square test was used for the statistical analysis.

Results

Total of 23 high school (age of 15-18) pitchers were evaluated. Group A (same scapula height) had 10 pitchers and Group B (more than 1 fingerbreadth scapula drop) had 13 pitchers. 9 of Group A had never had a problem and 1 had a pain at the evaluation. 5 of Group B had never had a problem and 8 had a pain at the evaluation. There is a significant difference if scapula height is same or drop to have a pain in shoulder or elbow in high school pitchers (p<0.05).

Conclusions

The static standing scapula height is related to shoulder or elbow pain in high school baseball pitchers.