Article: Prevalence and Treatment Outcomes of Hand and Wrist Injuries in Professional Athletes: A Systematic Review

On this rotation, one of the biggest fears shared by patients was whether or not they would be able to return to their normal level of function following treatment. I chose to find a systematic review conducted through the Hospital for Special Surgery reviewing the literature on injuries of the hand and wrist in professional athletes to determine the prevalence and types of injuries sustained in professional sports, the management and clinical outcomes of such injuries, and the statistics regarding return to play. This review included 4,300 separate hand and wrist injuries across several major sports with primary outcomes of levels of management and the ability to return to play once treatment was complete. While this study found that roughly 98% of athletes were able to return to their respective sports (with healing times ranging by sport), one limitation that this study did have was they did not use statistics within each sport to determine whether the athlete was performing at a similar level as prior to the injury.