Tenner Zachary M, Lamba Abhinav, Camp Christopher L, Griffith Timothy B, Conte Stan
New York University Grossman Long Island School of Medicine, Mineola, New York, USA.
Major League Baseball Commissioner's Office, New York, New York, USA.
Orthop J Sports Med. 2024 Nov 15;12(11):23259671241293454. doi: 10.1177/23259671241293454. eCollection 2024 Nov.
Abdominal musculature injuries comprise the third most prevalent time-loss injury across professional baseball. Despite increased awareness and prevention attempts in the recent decade, the trends of these abdominal injury numbers in Major League Baseball (MLB) are not fully understood.
To update the trends in oblique and intercostal injuries, analyze the impact of these injuries based on time out of play, and identify factors that correlate with increased injury severity to help with recovery time prognostication for the sports medicine community.
Descriptive epidemiology study.
Using the MLB Health and Injury Tracking System, the authors identified all abdominal and core musculature injuries that resulted in time out of play in MLB and Minor League Baseball (MiLB) between the 2011 and 2021 seasons. These were filtered for injuries that resulted in ≥1 days missed (DM) during spring training, the regular season, and postseason. A Student test was utilized to assess for significant differences for all normally distributed values. Regression analysis was utilized for determining change over time. For all statistical comparisons, the threshold for alpha was set to < .05.
During the study period between 2011 and 2021, there were 4560 total abdominal injuries among 3401 athletes. When filtered for in-season, time-loss injuries defined as spring training, regular season, and postseason, there were 2890 injuries. Of these, 1928 were oblique injuries, 453 were intercostal injuries, and 115 were rectus injuries. The number of oblique injuries each season increased for all of baseball ( < .001), as well as for MLB ( = .009) and MiLB ( = .012) individually. Of the 1928 oblique injuries, 498 (26%) oblique injuries occurred at the MLB level and 1430 (74%) occurred at the MiLB level. Batting and pitching-related injuries comprised 860 (45%) and 729 (38%) oblique injuries, with a total of 18,455 DM and 20,891 DM, respectively. This corresponded to a mean of 22 DM for batting injuries and 29 DM for pitching injuries (mean difference, 7.2; 95% CI, 5.27-9.13; < .001).
This decade-long study on professional baseball revealed a significant increase in abdominal oblique injuries across MLB and MiLB, with the largest number of injuries observed in the 2021 season. Meanwhile, there was a significant decrease in intercostal injuries across professional baseball during these years. Such injuries continue to pose challenges, leading to substantial DM per injury and affecting players from various positions.
腹部肌肉拉伤是职业棒球运动中第三大最常见的导致运动员缺席比赛的伤病。尽管在过去十年中人们对其的认识有所提高并采取了预防措施，但美国职业棒球大联盟（MLB）中这些腹部伤病数量的趋势尚未完全明晰。
更新斜肌和肋间肌损伤的趋势，基于缺赛时间分析这些损伤的影响，并确定与损伤严重程度增加相关的因素，以帮助运动医学领域预测恢复时间。
描述性流行病学研究。
作者利用MLB健康与伤病跟踪系统，确定了2011年至2021赛季期间在美国职业棒球大联盟（MLB）和美国小联盟棒球（MiLB）中所有导致运动员缺赛的腹部和核心肌肉损伤。筛选出在春训、常规赛和季后赛期间导致至少1天缺赛（DM）的损伤。采用学生t检验评估所有正态分布值的显著差异。利用回归分析确定随时间的变化。对于所有统计比较，α阈值设定为<0.05。
在2011年至2021年的研究期间，3401名运动员共发生4560例腹部损伤。当筛选出定义为春训、常规赛和季后赛期间的赛季内、导致缺赛的伤病时，有2890例损伤。其中，1928例为斜肌损伤，453例为肋间肌损伤，115例为腹直肌损伤。所有棒球赛事（P<0.001）以及MLB（P = 0.009）和MiLB（P = 0.012）各自的斜肌损伤数量每个赛季都在增加。在1928例斜肌损伤中，498例（26%）发生在MLB级别，1430例（74%）发生在MiLB级别。与击球和投球相关的损伤分别占斜肌损伤的860例（45%）和729例（38%），缺赛天数总计分别为18455天和20891天。这相当于击球损伤平均缺赛22天，投球损伤平均缺赛29天（平均差异为7.2；95%置信区间为5.27 - 9.13；P<0.001）。
这项针对职业棒球长达十年的研究表明，MLB和MiLB的腹部斜肌损伤显著增加，2021赛季观察到的损伤数量最多。与此同时，这些年职业棒球赛事中的肋间肌损伤显著减少。此类损伤继续构成挑战，导致每次损伤缺赛天数众多，并影响到不同位置的球员。
