Clinical, biomechanical and radiological evaluation of suprascapular nerve injury in elite volleyball players

CLINICAL, BIOMECHANİCAL AND RADIOLOGICAL EVALUATION OFSUPRASCAPULAR NERVE INJURY IN ELITE VOLLEYBALL PLAYERSDr. Emre AldinçPurpose: In this study, we tried to evaluate the early findings of suprascapular nerve injury(SNI) with MRI and biomechanical investigations in asymptomatic elite volleyball players.Materials and Methods: A study group of 14 elite female volleyball players who aremembers of Turkish National Volleyball Team and teams of Turkish Professional VolleyballLeague and a control group with similar age and body mass index properties were established.The groups were compared in terms of SNI clinically with history and physical examination,biomechanically with Cybex assessment of external rotation powers of both shoulders andradiologically with MRI of shoulders on the dominant side. One volleyball player withpositive SNI findings during physical examination was discarded from the study group.Findings: Volleyball players in the study group were clinically normal except one who wasdiscarded from the study because of the positive examination findings. During biomechanicalassessment, both groups were not significantly different in terms of the ratios of shoulderexternal rotation forces of the dominant and non-dominant sides and also the frequency of thementioned ratio being less than 1. During MRI assessment, there was also no significantdifference between the groups in terms of MRI findings related to SNI.Result: Out of 14 elite volleybal players randomly chosen for evaluation, only one hadpositive physical examination findings related to SNI, this is a quite lower frequency than theones reported in the literature. The results of biomechanical and MRI assessments in our studyshow that SNI-related findings in elite volleyball players with no complaints and clinicalfindings are not significantly different from the control group of similar age and body massindex.