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Copyright ©The Author(s) 2016. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Orthop. Oct 18, 2016; 7(10): 650-656
Published online Oct 18, 2016. doi: 10.5312/wjo.v7.i10.650
Treatment of the ulnar nerve for overhead throwing athletes undergoing ulnar collateral ligament reconstruction
Matthew S Conti, Christopher L Camp, Neal S Elattrache, David W Altchek, Joshua S Dines
Matthew S Conti, Department of Orthopaedic Surgery, Hospital for Special Surgery, New York, NY 10021, United States
Christopher L Camp, David W Altchek, Joshua S Dines, Shoulder and Sports Medicine Service, Hospital for Special Surgery, New York, NY 10021, United States
Neal S Elattrache, Kerlan-Jobe Orthopaedic Clinic, Los Angeles, CA 90045, United States
Author contributions: Conti MS, Camp CL and Dines JS wrote the paper; Elattrache NS and Altchek DW reviewed and revised the manuscript.
Conflict-of-interest statement: Authors declare no conflict of interests for this article.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Correspondence to: Joshua S Dines, MD, Shoulder and Sports Medicine Service, Hospital for Special Surgery, 535 East 70th Street, New York, NY 10021, United States. dinesj@hss.edu
Telephone: +1-516-4821037 Fax: +1-516-4829217
Received: April 23, 2016
Peer-review started: April 24, 2016
First decision: June 6, 2016
Revised: July 15, 2016
Accepted: August 6, 2016
Article in press: August 8, 2016
Published online: October 18, 2016
Core Tip

Core tip: Ulnar nerve (UN) injuries frequently plague overhead athletes due to the strain caused by extreme valgus stress across the elbow during throwing. In this paper, we review common locations of UN compression and keys to the evaluation. We also discuss the recent literature on treatment of injuries to the UN in overhead athletes and our preferred techniques for addressing UN symptomatology during concomitant UCL reconstruction. Athletes are increasingly being treated with subcutaneous anterior UN transpositions only when appreciable neurologic symptoms are present preoperatively.