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Original article
Return to elite-level sport after clavicle fractures
  1. Jonah Hebert-Davies,
  2. Julie Agel
  1. Department of Orthopaedic Surgery and Sports Medicine, Harborview Medical Center, Seattle, Washington, USA
  1. Correspondence to Dr Jonah Hebert-Davies; jdavies{at}uw.edu

Abstract

Objective To determine if return to sport following clavicle fracture occurs earlier in high-level sports than the current standard of care allows for.

Design Observational study retrospective review of NHL prospective data.

Setting The study was performed at a university orthopaedic surgery department.

Patients NHL player with clavicle fracture.

Assessment of independent variables The independent variable including time on injured reserve and type of treatment.

Main outcome measures The primary study outcome measure was successful return to NHL play.

Results 15 athletes were identified; 10 were treated operatively and 5 non-operatively. The average return to ice hockey was 10 weeks. If the one outlier is removed, the average is 9.1 weeks. There was one re-fracture in the non-operative group. The average time from injury to return to sport was 65 days in the operative group and 97.6 days in the non-operative group. Two patients were unable to return play during the same season.

Conclusions High-end athletes safely return to at-risk sports after clavicle fracture much sooner than the average seen with non-elite athletes. Additional study may demonstrate that return to activity can likely be accelerated without significantly increasing complications.

  • clavicle
  • fracture
  • national hockey league
  • return to activity

This is an open access article 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, appropriate credit is given, any changes made indicated, and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/

https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjsem-2018-000371

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    Footnotes

    • Contributors Both authors contributed equally to the manuscript.

    • Funding The authors have not declared a specific grant for this research from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors.

    • Competing interests None declared.

    • Patient consent Not required.

    • Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.