A 12-year-old, level-10 competitive gymnast faced increasing elbow pain. When she couldn’t fully bend or straighten her elbow, she turned to the Duke physical therapists at her gym for help. The physical therapists referred her to sports medicine orthopaedic surgeon Jocelyn Ross Wittstein, MD. Coordinating care with therapists through an outreach program has helped to identify cases like these, according to Wittstein quickly.
Radiographs revealed osteochondritis dissecans (OCD) of the capitellum, with a broken and dislodged fragment of bone and cartilage limiting her range of motion. Such injuries in athletes like baseball players are treated by arthroscopically removing the fragment and debriding the defect site. Still, this treatment is not always sufficient for gymnasts, whose elbows must bear their weight.
What did Dr. Wittstein do to return this injured gymnast to competition?