Supraspinatus Tendon Thickness in the Overhead Throwing Athlete

A common limiting injury to many pitchers in baseball is tendinopathy of the rotator cuff. One of the common diagnostic tools for this pathology is the use of an MRI. With rising health care costs, many health care workers are looking for ways to still be effective in establishing diagnoses, while cutting costs where possible. A new tool that is being given some use in diagnosing shoulder injuries is an ultrasound. In the past, the finding of "tendon thickening" was incorporated with diagnosing an individual with tendinosis of the shoulder. This identification of thickening was made without any established norms for tendon thickness. This study's purpose was to try and identify the norms for tendon thickness in collegiate pitchers.

The article actually found that in the asymptomatic right-handed pitchers, there was a significant difference in the thickness of the supraspinatus tendon, the dominant arm tendon being thicker. No such difference was found in left-handed pitchers. This could be a significant finding in realizing the misdiagnosis that could occur by simply using tendon thickness as the basis for identifying a pathology. One of the limiting factors of the study was the fact that it was simply a cross-sectional observational study of 12 pitchers. With the low participant rate, it is unknown how much the results of this study can be applied to a larger population, but it will hopefully lead to further investigation into the area. While the study does not establish any significant tendon thickness norms (due to the small sample size and study design), it brought the potential of misdiagnosis into the focus for further consideration.