884 MEP022 – Preventing upper extremity injuries using wearable biomechanical devices in elite baseball pitchers: a feasibility and implementation study

AbstractBackground Baseball is an Olympic sport that clinicians, coaches, and athletes have sought to leverage biomechanical devices to inform training for injury prevention. Upper extremity (UE) injuries can result in time-loss, negatively impacting athlete health. A novel biomechanical pitch sleeve that incorporates circuitry into the fabric and a portable force plate have been proposed to track workload, kinetic, and kinematic data. Determining uptake and adherence is essential to ensure adoption of these technologies can contribute to injury prevention. Objective To determine the uptake and adherence of wearable and portable biomechanical devices among elite baseball pitchers during a single summer training season. Design A prospective repeated measures feasibility and implementation study.Setting Individual team facilities.Participants 22 baseball pitchers (age: 19.5 +/- 1.2 years) on 2 USA Baseball affiliate developmental league teams.Intervention A novel biomechanical pitch sleeve and portable force plate.Main Outcome Measures Uptake was calculated as the proportion of athletes who initially used the biomechanical sleeve (tracking pitch counts, velocity, elbow varus torque) the first day, and the force plate (3 counter movement jumps performed each session) the first week. Adherence was calculated as the proportion of athletes who used 1) the pitching sleeve during all practices; 2) the jump mat sessions 1+ times per week. 95% Confidence intervals (CIs) were calculated using the Clopper-Pearson method.Results The observed uptake for initiating force plate use was 0.36 (95%CIs: 0.17, 0.59), whereas uptake for the pitching sleeve was 0.64 (95%CI: 0.41, 0.83). Adherence for jump mat use was 0.60 (95% CI: 0.43, 0.74), compared to 0.13 (95%CI: 0.09, 0.15) for the pitch sleeve.Conclusions Addressing barriers and facilitators to increase uptake and adherence is necessary to inform future studies on the effect of these devices on preventing upper extremity injuries using workload, kinetic, and kinematic data monitoring.