Effects of Lumbar Disk Herniation on the Careers of Professional Baseball Players

Abstract

Outcomes after lumbar disk herniation in baseball athletes are currently unknown. It has been postulated that the repetitive torque-producing motions of a baseball player may have negative implications after a disk injury. Sixty-nine lumbar disk herniations (40 treated operatively, 29 nonoperatively) in 64 professional baseball players were identified, and important outcome measures including successful return to play, time to recovery, career longevity, and performance based on vital statistics to each position were documented. Ninety-seven percent of baseball athletes successfully returned to play at an average of 6.6 months after diagnosis. Athletes treated operatively required significantly more time to return to play than those managed nonoperatively (8.7 vs 3.6 months, respectively; P<.0001).

Outcomes of Lumbar Discectomy in Elite Athletes: The Need for High-level Evidence

“…For NHL players, Schroeder et al [17] reported an average of 129.6 hockey games played postoperatively. For MLB players, the average career longevity postoperatively was 232.8 games, as reported by Earhart et al [8]. For NFL players, the average postoperative career longevity was 36 games [9].…”

“…The average reported recovery time for athletes undergoing lumbar discectomy to return to active play ranged from 2.8 to 8.7 months [8,23,24,29]. The shortest reported recovery time was 2 months for a professional ballerina (n = 1) [24].…”

“…In addition, there were four Olympians who participated in water polo, skiing, and swimming, two professional sailors, one professional ballerina, and one professional mixed martial arts fighter ( Table 2). The average age reported in these studies for patients undergoing lumbar discectomy ranged from 19.4 to 31.1 years [2,8,9,17,23,24,28,29]. The average body mass index (BMI) in studies that reported this statistic ranged from 21.9 to 35.5 kg/m 2 [2,8,10,28,29].…”

“…In the cases of disagreement, the senior author graded the study. Postsurgical outcomes were compiled including the percentage of athletes who were able to return to play at their previous level of competition (10 articles reporting) [2, 8-10, 17, 19, 23, 24, 28, 29], the recovery period after lumbar discectomy to return to play (four articles) [8,23,24,29], the number of games played after surgery (three articles) [8,9,17], the number of years played after surgery (two articles) [10,17], and performance outcomes based on statistical performance both before and after lumbar discectomy (three articles) [8,10,17]. Performance scores for two studies [9,17] based on a previously published scoring system [5] using statistics unique to each sport and position were used as an outcome measure.…”

“…Schroeder et al [17] described a similar formula for hockey players based on goals, assists, and shots on goal and was individualized based on position. In baseball athletes [8], the performance outcome measure was determined for hitters as the batting average and for pitchers the earned run average.…”