Abstract
Though infrequently reported, female athletes do suffer injuries to the ulnar collateral ligament (UCL) of the elbow. These occur during participation in a wide variety of sports, including softball, tennis, javelin, and gymnastics. The mechanism of injury is often chronic microtrauma; however, ligament avulsion is commonly seen as well. Extensive damage to the ligament necessitates reconstruction. To this point, there has not been any research to suggest a different approach to reconstruction in the female athlete, and thus the procedure performed is the same one classically described in the male athlete. However, when the ligament is not as extensively injured, Argo has reported excellent results with primary repair, although his study is limited by a small sample size. For this reason, in contrast to current literature regarding the treatment of male throwers, repair should be considered in these female patients competing at or below the college level. This offers the benefit of a less invasive procedure and potentially an earlier return to sport. However, treatment recommendations for the female athlete with a UCL injury are limited by the paucity of literature regarding both the biomechanics of the female ligament and the outcome data in this patient population.
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Gardner, E.C., Manzi, J., McElheny, K., Bedi, A. (2021). Ulnar Collateral Ligament Injury in Female Athletes. In: Dines, J.S., Camp, C.L., Altchek, D.W. (eds) Elbow Ulnar Collateral Ligament Injury. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-69567-5_30
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