Shoulder Disease Patterns of the Wheelchair Athletes of Table-Tennis and Archery: A Pilot Study.
OBJECTIVE
To investigate the shoulder disease patterns for the table-tennis (TT) and archery (AR) wheelchair athletes via ultrasonographic evaluations.


METHODS
A total of 35 wheelchair athletes were enrolled, made up of groups of TT (n=19) and AR (n=16) athletes. They were all paraplegic patients and were investigated for their wheelchair usage duration, careers as sports players, weekly training times, the Wheelchair User's Shoulder Pain Index (WUSPI) scores and ultrasonographic evaluation. Shoulders were divided into playing arm of TT, non-playing arm of TT, bow-arm of AR, and draw arm of AR athletes. Shoulder diseases were classified into five entities of subscapularis tendinopathy, supraspinatus tendinopathy, infraspinatus tendinopathy, biceps long head tendinopathy, and subacromial-subdeltoid bursitis. The pattern of shoulder diseases were compared between the two groups using the Mann-Whitney and the chi-square tests.


RESULTS
WSUPI did not significantly correlate with age, wheelchair usage duration, career as players or weekly training times for all the wheelchair athletes. For the non-playing arm of TT athletes, there was a high percentage of subscapularis (45.5%) and supraspinatus (40.9%) tendinopathy. The percentage of subacromial-subdeltoid bursitis showed a tendency to be present in the playing arm of TT athletes (20.0%) compared with their non-playing arm (4.5%), even though this was not statistically significant. Biceps long head tendinopathy was the most common disease of the shoulder in the draw arm of AR athletes, and the difference was significant when compared to the non-playing arm of TT athletes (p<0.05).


CONCLUSIONS
There was a high percentage of subscapularis and supraspinatus tendinopathy cases for the non-playing arm of TT wheelchair athletes, and a high percentage of biceps long head tendinopathy for the draw arm for the AR wheelchair athletes. Consideration of the biomechanical properties of each sport may be needed to tailor specific training for wheelchair athletes.
Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, Veterans Health Service Medical Center, Seoul, Korea.
Byung-Chun
0000-0003-3231-2722
BC
You
Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, Veterans Health Service Medical Center, Seoul, Korea.
Won-Jae
0000-0001-6028-3565
WJ
Lee
Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, Veterans Health Service Medical Center, Seoul, Korea.
Seung-Hwa
0000-0003-3034-7980
SH
Lee
Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, Veterans Health Service Medical Center, Seoul, Korea.
Sol
0000-0002-8534-9599
S
Jang
Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, Veterans Health Service Medical Center, Seoul, Korea.
Hyun-Seok
0000-0003-2994-0066
HS
Lee
Archery; Rotator cuff tendinopathy; Table tennis; Ultrasound; Wheelchair athletes